We have here the latest (hopefully last) version of the prologue to my book-length treatise The Demeaning of Life, now entitled Biocomplexity: The Third Infinity. I’ll present it in two parts…this is some prettty rich food-for-thought. ◦◦◦◦◦ The subtitle, I should explain, refers to seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher Rene Pascal’s positioning of humankind between two infinities—the infinitely small and the infinitely large. Others have subsequently proposed a “third infinity”—the infinitely complex, as encountered in nature. ◦◦◦◦◦ This is a significant rewrite of the opening to what started out as a lengthy essay, began in 2012. (If I may say so, it’s very much improved.) The subject? Wellll…it’s complicated. In ten-words-or-less, it’s about The Meaning of Life. More to the point, I draw attention to the notion that the whole of life—the “phenomenon” of living matter—is in serious need of revision. Fact of the matter is, no one really knows what life is…much less, how it got started, why it works so well and why there’s so much of it. With time’s passage, science has come to rely almost exclusively on truly astonishing technologies. But as we probe deeper and deeper into what were once rank mysteries, biology has veered away from its original focus—the study of living organisms—turning into almost a sub-branch of both chemistry and physics. With ever-greater attention on minutiae, driven by data mass collection, biologists have gradually lost sight of the bigger picture. Their findings have revealed that the degree of complexity and sophistication we see throughout nature can no longer be viewed as a product of randomness and chance. Natural selection is not the sole driver of evolution. And no one has the slightest clue about how life began in the first place. Drafts of chapters I’ve posted previously explore these things and more, adding layers to my argument that the entire field of biology is in need of a reboot. ◦◦◦◦◦ From the last paragraph of this prologue: “With an approach emulating Darwin’s Origin of Species, this work too boils down to ‘one long argument,’ bringing together a range of up-to-date information and evidence from many scientific fields as fodder for thoughtful speculation. Its objective: to present an alternative way of looking at the natural world.”
Prologue. Problem? What Problem? (Part 2)
As things stand, many of those reading these words would be, not just unmoved, but would instinctively react with something between skepticism and outrage. Question science? Heresy! Given the heady, hi-tech climate of our times, few people are ready and willing to contemplate what amounts to a simple, reasoned appeal to scientific humility. Why are so many so confident we understand things that in truth we don’t fully understand? Answers to these questions can be traced to our cultural milieu and how it affects the way we perceive the world, think about it, talk about it, and write about it.
In philosophy, “empiricism” is the belief that knowledge is derived from sensory experience (as opposed to pure reason or intuition) and that knowledge once gained is tentative and subject to continual revision. One of science’s major precepts is the notion that any entity can best be understood by way of an approach based on observation and experiment—what we call the “scientific method.” Despite recognized limits to the empirical pursuit of knowledge, with its baked-in acceptance of doubt and emphasis on non-certainty, many people—scientists and non-scientists alike—remain convinced that biology’s thorniest problems will eventually yield to technological innovation wielded by creative minds. Those less sanguine about scientific progress in general see life as an abiding mystery, an enigma the human mind can’t fully comprehend. Either way, life’s deep-rooted complexities are daunting to behold and most scientists freely admit that we’re a long way from anything like a complete understanding of nature, of life. (Some, that we’ve barely scratched the surface.)
But even among those who realize just how far we are from a thorough understanding of living nature, few are willing to entertain the notion that shadowy biological life-laws await discovery—namely, legitimate physical/chemical principles relevant only to animated matter. Elemental laws of nature whose cryptic influences produce little in the way of measureable (or even observable) evidence. Skeptics dismiss this idea as laughable. But note: since the mid-twentieth century scientific progress has relied almost exclusively on costly instrumentation and is largely data-driven. As a result, there’s a widespread conviction that what our highly sophisticated instruments can’t identify and measure isn’t strictly real. I believe this attitude blinds us to the possibility that subtle biological principles await discovery—principles that have somehow eluded detection. Eminent scientists including theoretical physicists Paul Davies and Freeman Dyson, molecular biologist Franklin Harold, and biophysicist Harold Morowitz have all suggested as much—and they’re by no means alone. Each maintain that imaginative, unorthodox ways of looking at long-standing problems, problems like the origin of life, are essential if we hope to plug gaps in our ever-expanding body of scientific knowledge. But funding for such quixotic ventures is at present nonexistent and few are willing to risk reputation and career to go off tilting at theoretical windmills.
Another important point needs to be introduced straight away: the idea of life’s innate hyper-complexity. To be more specific: the concept of complexification as an inescapable spin-off of life’s penchant for generating order from chaos. From here on, biological complexity in all its manifestations will be treated as an attribute of living matter—an innate characteristic common to all life forms…a quality…a “thing.” As such, it merits designation and I’ve settled on the word “biocomplexity” to denote the concept. [footnote: For some time I was under the impression that I’d invented a new term…only to learn that, as of 1999, “biocomplexity” had been introduced as a discrete area of study examining “properties emerging from the interplay of behavioral, biological, chemical, physical, and social interactions that affect, sustain, or are modified by living organisms, including humans.” The word will be used here in its wider sense, as a quality arising from the multilevel interactions exhibited by all life forms.] The recognition of biocomplexity as a discrete feature common to all forms of life will bring us closer to understanding life’s deeper nature.
As for the biological machine metaphor, this centuries-old depiction of living things as machines skirts critical differences. Machines, by definition, have to be designed and assembled. Machines don’t build themselves…can’t replicate or carry out self-repair. Machines never “evolve” or adapt on their own. They lack autonomy and agency—the capacity to act. In contrast, primitive microbes employ staggeringly elaborate schemes to steer development, reproduction, communication, regulation, and maintenance. Investigators have never been able to locate, in any type of life form, a centralized command center that governs the whole organism. In fact, biologists are just beginning to confront the notion that every developmental or regulatory influence is subject to further regulation, also regulated—an infinite regress with no vertical hierarchy, no “higher” or “lower,” nothing that can be said to be in charge.
With any highly complex matter, inapt terminology leads to misinterpretation and error. It’s clear that our limited grasp of life-as-phenomenon is partly due to linguistic deficiency. Right now—lacking suitable terminology, there’s no way to accurately express what I’m attempting to describe. But this is what we’re faced with: all living things and all their entangled life-systems are guided by some form of whole-organism, decentralized, coordinating influence that beggars description. This is the root of the “problem.” We’ll delve into all this later, but for now—this thing deserves a name. Call it what you will; call it ”shared organismal intelligence.” Or call it “life-logic.“ But call it something. To give whatever-it-is a face, to make whatever-it-is real. So that we can start talking freely about matters of genuine consequence. To that end: in order to underscore its singular nature, when being considered as a collective phenomenon in all its wholeness and unity, “life” will henceforth be rendered “LIFE.”
Returning once more to the machine metaphor: machine language fails to convey the essence of coordinated, cooperative interactions taking place in organs and tissues and cells. Machine terminology explicitly denies the organism agency and excludes the narrative thread of its event-full life. Likewise, the proliferating use of computer jargon in biology has a similar effect by fostering a sense that organisms are preprogrammed automatons running on binary code. Using bio-free language is counterproductive, guaranteeing that crucial aspects of the LIFE phenomenonget lost in translation.
All scientific fields go through adjustment phases and periodic course corrections. As we come to a fuller understanding of how the living world operates, innovative scientific terms will materialize as need arises, leaping into common usage virtually overnight—words and phrases with just the right tenor and tone to complement a more nuanced view of LIFE. An updated biological lexicon will shift focus from mechanism and information-processing to address LIFE’s subtler, qualitative aspects. (For example: at present, we lack discrete terms that could help elucidate borderline taboo subjects—like the intentional actions, the behaviors exhibited by plants, cells, microbes…even viruses.) The future will see other changes including the introduction of biological principles and hypotheses that have what might be called a different “flavor.” For instance, some proposals will be couched in language that can address LIFE’s signature paradoxical qualities. Similar to what’s currently taking place in modern cosmology, working theories will be derived from impossible-to-prove inferences that, nonetheless, agree with observation. This approach to biological theorizing, while clearly limited in scope, may yet be capable of shining some light on unsolved problems. As always, change will be met with staunch resistance. Biology, like present-day cosmology, will soon be pressing up against the boundary between science and metaphysics; controversy and discord will be rife. Anticipating the coming challenges, celebrated twentieth-century microbiologist Carl Woese wrote, “A future biology cannot be built within the conceptual superstructure of the past. The old superstructure has to be replaced by a new one before the holistic problems of biology can emerge as biology’s new mainstream….”
Scientists attempt “to explain the unknown with the knowable,” devising theories whose objective is to describe or explain natural phenomena. Theories are then subjected to tests that can establish or refute their validity as part of a stepwise process. That’s all. Scientific theories aim for accurate representations of reality, not final answers. Nothing in science is permanently settled; there are no indisputable facts, only suppositions presumed to be valid until proven otherwise. One of my objectives is to challenge long-standing assumptions and fixed positions. In that light, I invite readers to approach this material in the spirit of open scientific inquiry, which simply asks us 1) to question assumptions and beliefs and then, 2) be willing to modify them as new information presents itself. While these venerable axioms likely seem self-evident, it needs to be emphasized: we are fallible beings—creatures of deep habit, mental as well as behavioral, continually subject to influences that impact the way we perceive…everything. Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis:
Our outlooks shape what we see and how we know. Any idea we conceive as fact or truth is integrated into an entire style of thought, of which we are usually unaware…. Call the dominating inhibitions that determine our point of view whatever you wish. They affect all of us, including scientists. All are saddled with heavy linguistic, national, regional, and generational impediments to perception. Like those of everyone else, the scientist’s hidden assumptions affect his or her behavior, unwittingly directing thought.
Wise words. As for my own perceptual impediments: with no ideological axe to grind and no conventional philosophy or religion to uphold, I simply wish to know—to the extent my limited faculties permit—why our world is the way it is. With an approach emulating that of Darwin’s Origin of Species, the work in hand comprises “one long argument,” bringing together a broad range of up-to-date information and evidence from diverse scientific fields as fodder for imaginative speculation. Its objective: to present an alternative way of looking at the natural world, to view what I’ve termed LIFE through a new lens. My hope is that readers will take away a heightened appreciation for all the wonders that surround us…wonders that live within us.
©2021 Tim Forsell 7 Sep 2021
