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@ Scott
2024-06-05 15:32:31There's a common explanation of how living things develop over time. You could call it Darwinian evolution. The idea is that organisms change randomly and that the good changes build up over time and lead to both the betterment of a species and the inception of new species altogether. The only problem with this explanation is that it is wrong. I can't totally get into that. But even Darwin knew that organisms don't change randomly. A lot of people know that actually. It would do us well to pull together a more sophisticated explanation of this reality. It should start with a serious recognition of how all livings things work together as one.
It's an abstract idea to see all of life as "one", of course. To help paint a picture, here is an example from this biochemist guy named Nick Lane for how this could be understood:
You asked about a trajectory. The trajectory is the planetary trajectory. The planet has properties. It's basically, it's got a lot of iron at the center of it. It's got a lot of electrons at the center of it. It's more oxidized on the outside partly because of the sun. And partly because the heat of volcanoes puts out oxidized gases. So the planet is a battery. It's a giant battery. And we have a flow of electrons going from inside to outside in these hydrothermal vents. And that's the same topology that a cell has. A cell is basically just a micro version of the planet. — Nick Lane, Lex Fridman Podcast #318, 29th minute
See this idea of the planet being a "giant battery" and the cell being a "micro version of the planet". There is a deep unity here coming from a planet-level constraint that all of life must conform to. Instead of seeing the multitude of species as struggling against each other, there is a way to see them as working together. Contending with the overarching forces acting on them.
On some level we already know this. Ideas such as food-chain and ecosystem are familiar and are examples of how we already see individual species as members of something greater. When brought to its full extent however, understanding this greater picture reveals a mechanism independent from and complimentary to darwinian evolution.
This mechanism is shown to be different from darwinian evolution by considering how the current explanation of life relies on populations of organisms. The concept of natural selection only makes sense if there is a population to select from. Life as one great being, however, has no population. It is a brave and lonely soul facing off with the universe. Natural selection can not guide its development.
Let's call this additional mechanism radiation. There's a historical precedent for that name so it's somewhat justified. "Evolutionary radiation" has been used to described periods in history where life rapidly changed. *cough \~foreshadowing~ *cough
The development of life is now seen as a composition of evolution and radiation. The larger the population, the greater the evolutionary power. The smaller the population, the greater the radiative power.
From here we can speak to the "random change" so often espoused in explanations of evolution. Life at a planetary scale does not have the luxury to randomly change and just "try shit". Its death would be final. Of all the processes that pure radiation might be, random change is not a possibility. And the same applies to all levels of life, for radiation is active there as well. Life is always radiating and evolving simultaneously.
How is the wholeness of life to proceed in a seemingly cold and hostile universe? It seems to strain against the very physics of reality. A beast writhing and seething in its chains. Where were we when the earth’s foundations were laid?
When genes evolved, later on, they conducted a score that already existed, just as the conductor of an orchestra is responsible for the interpretation - the tempo and the subtleties - but not the music itself. The music was there all along, the music of the spheres. — Life Ascending, Chapter I, Page 42