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 be presenting it in two parts…this is some pretty 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 1)
The reality of organic systems is vastly untidy. If only their parts were all distinct, with specific functions for each! Alas, these systems are not like machines. Our human minds have as little intuitive feeling for organic complexity as they do for quantum physics.
Randolph Nesse
SCIENCE MAY WELL BE HUMANITY’S greatest innovation, extending perception of the observable universe beyond what we can see and touch to encompass the infinitely small and inconceivably distant. In the broadest sense, “science” is a mode of thought, a process of inquiry, an intellectual tool. We need reminding from time to time that science as we know it has been around for only a few hundred years—not long at all, especially when you take into account the prodigious accomplishments of cultures that existed for millennia prior to sixteenth-century Europe’s Scientific Revolution. And while most of us have a solid sense of what science is, it can be hard to put that understanding into words. After all, science’s origins—even how to define the word—have been subject to endless debate. (Scholars still argue over matters like Who deserves most credit for ushering in the modern era?) Amazingly, it wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that science’s so-called modern era begin to take shape, with all its familiar professional institutions and conventions and arcane terminology in place. And then things took off in earnest: in no time at all ordinary human beings deconstructed atomic nuclei, probed the far reaches of space, and began to dream of other universes. Nuclear physicists have identified scores of short-lived subatomic particles, with no end in sight. At the other end of the spectrum, a telescope in low Earth orbit transmits digital information back to the surface to be converted into photographic images like the one showing hundreds of galaxies that look like fuzzy stars, galaxies so distant they appear as they would have looked shortly after the Big Bang. Monumental endeavors like these have come to seem almost commonplace. Strange, that we seldom pause to think about just how remarkable it all is. All of it. All thanks to science and hard working scientists.
And us (that is, humans)—sole surviving lineage of an evolutionary experiment that may or may not stand the test of time. Our primal ancestors just showed up one day; a new species of mid-sized mammal that fashioned its own niche by standing on two legs, freeing up the hands. They hunted, gathered, and scavenged much like other animals but lacking sharp teeth and claws had to rely on their wits to survive, resulting in a burst of evolutionary innovation. These proto-humans learned how to learn. Grunts and growls morphed into language and song. Their dexterous hands were seldom idle and the cleverest among them stumbled on novel ways of doing and making. Tools were contrived, fire tamed. Over time, some of their daily activities came to have little connection with procuring food or otherwise helping ensure survival—music and art, for instance. Against odds a few small bands persisted and eventually thrived. Generation after generation passed on to their young the experiential wisdom they’d acquired. And now, thanks entirely to descendents of our early forbears, we have microwave ovens, GPS navigation, and digital-everythings at our disposal. Contemporary versions of those distant relatives perform arthroscopic surgeries and design transgenic food crops. We discovered ways to harvest the energy of the atom and transform entire landscapes to suit our needs—even figured out how to build better mousetraps.
Again, this vast reservoir of scientific know-how was gained practically overnight, mostly through the efforts of regular people working in labs and observatories or out in the field, driven by sheer curiosity and that uniquely human desire to know. To understand. Today, the fruits of our highly advanced technologies, developed over mere decades, are widely available to the unwashed masses—things our great-grandparents would never have imagined possible. (My mother’s mother, born shortly before the first airplane flight, watched men walk on the moon…and then saw thirty more summers.) But as for us: life in the twenty-first century makes it even harder to fathom just how far we’ve come as a species since those strange arboreal primates warily emerged from a forest somewhere in East Africa, squinting in the harsh light there at the edge of their first New World. How could it be that in only six million years or so—minutes, in geologic time—bipedal ape-like creatures with opposable thumbs went from crafting crude stone implements to fabricating microchips and reusable rocket ships? Amazing. But it was the gift of one particular invention—science—that made such things a reality.
Hi-tech wonders aside, the imaginative use of standard scientific techniques can yield startling, unanticipated discoveries. Just think: chemical analysis of two completely unrelated materials (mineral deposits in caves and minute air bubbles trapped in ancient polar ice) has allowed meteorologists to recreate primordial atmospheres and paleoclimates. By splicing a human gene containing instructions for producing insulin onto bacterial DNA and then cultivating these genetically modified microbes in vats, single-celled organisms are in effect turned into chemical factories. And now we receive accurate—accurate!—seven-day weather forecasts, available around the clock thanks to that pocket-sized computer no one leaves home without. Near-miracles like these are legion. Human ingenuity appears to be almost without limit.
But there’s another side to this story. All our stunning technical achievements, placed alongside an equally impressive stock of hard-won knowledge: the sum total shines a spotlight on certain pivotal questions—questions thus far stubbornly resistant to scientific inquiry. Some notable examples:
Atomic matter—that is, what our world is made of—accounts for a mere five percent of the universe’s mass-energy. The other ninety-five percent consists of unknown, undetectable forms of matter (“dark matter”) and energy (“dark energy”).
Scientists still have little more than vague notions of how life sprang into existence (notwithstanding the buoyant claims of science writers and pundits who routinely assure us that answers to this age old mystery are at hand). Competing theories based on surmise and wishful thinking are treated as established fact. Attempts to create artificial life have essentially gone nowhere but, ditto the confident claims.
Human consciousness. Despite steady progress in areas such as the mapping of brain circuits, measuring their activity, and pinpointing the mechanics of memory storage, consciousness remains a persistent mystery—the deepest riddle of all.
As for the life sciences: we’ve yet to determine the basis of biological form and pattern (for instance, why fingers and toes come in threes, fours, or fives but never sevens). And as to how species diverge, or even what constitutes a species—there’s still no widespread consensus on such key topics. Many evolutionary processes are still poorly understood and subject to heated debate.
These issues share a common thread. Namely: the “problem” of biological complexity. Problem? What problem? Thanks in part to an ever-increasing capacity to generate and process mountains of data, contemporary researchers find that the study of life is growing more complicated with each passing year—particularly at molecular scales. The latest findings of biochemists and molecular biologists reveal layered intricacies their predecessors never anticipated. Incredible as this may seem, leading biologists of the mid-1800s believed cells to be little more than shapeless, unstructured containers filled with water or slime. But even now, the ways cells interact with their neighbors, how cells coordinate their specific roles in tissues and organs, certain aspects of their most elementary properties: basic matters like these still present explanatory hurdles. The same goes for the macro level and on up the ladder of life’s vast web of interdependence. Here, too, ecologists stare down another seemingly bottomless well of multiplying complexities. Their studies frequently reveal unforeseen connections—at all levels, at all scales. Nothing in biology is as straightforward as once imagined. Nothing.
There’s no end to the mind-boggling intricacy associated with each and every aspect of the natural world. Of course, biology isn’t alone in this regard; each scientific field has its own complications and unresolved problems. And every discipline has its own way of approaching them. Physicists, for instance, face the unsettling prospect that subatomic particles may not be the ultimate material division. And whatever it is that matter comprises will most likely remain beyond experimentation (or, worse, beyond comprehension). Likewise, biologists—unable to establish the precise point where chemistry, physics, and that enigmatic spark of life converge—may never settle on a definitive foundation for their own field. This built-in ambiguity sets biology apart from most of the other physical sciences. Where does the study of life even begin?
Analogies shed light on complicated matters, making hard things easier to grasp. For example, there’s this time-honored simile dating from the seventeenth century: Organisms are like wonderful machines. Without question, viewing living things as elaborate machines provides a clearer picture of their multipart structures and interconnected systems. Indeed, many people argue that living things are machines—literally. Others believe this undervalues the extreme degree of functional complexity that all forms of life display; after all, our most advanced machinery pales in comparison to the most primitive mud-dwelling microbe. The sophistication of things like pea pods and feathers and snail shells and ankle joints are simply taken for granted, seldom eliciting the wonder they so richly deserve. Our days are full to overflowing already and we simply can’t spare the time or energy it takes to be astonished by run of the mill miracles. Vital natural processes—a perfect example being the ceaseless, rhythmic beating of our hearts—go unnoticed in much the same way we reflexively tune out distracting noises.
And so it is that we’re almost forced to ignore the biological version of a Great Truth—right there in front of us, all the time, just waiting to appear as a blinding flash of insight. The gist of its wordless message is this: Life’s true nature is subtle and elusive. Scientists have achieved a basic grasp of its capabilities, yes, but have only a partial awareness of life’s limitations…little insight into how biological order arises from chaos…barely an inkling of what the organism “means.” Our rudimentary conception of what life IS is clouded by faulty assumptions, preconception, and lack of imagination. As a result, the Western scientific tradition’s portrayal of life is flawed—deeply and irrevocably flawed from the bottom up.
END OF PART 1. ©2021 Tim Forsell 7 Sep 2021
