III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

A. UniVerse Alive: An Organic, Self-Made, Encoded, Familial Procreativity

			The Great Nebula in Orion is an immense, nearby starbirth region. It is here seen through ultraviolet and blue filters augmented with three exact colors specifically emitted by hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. It spans about 40 light years and is located about 1500 light years away in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun. The image was taken by the European Southern Observatory MPG/ESO 2.2 meter telescope and the text above is based on a NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 27, 2004.

A continuous thread seems to link together the events of the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang to the advent of Homo sapiens. The striking continuity of the general pattern of evolution suggests that the Universe was pregnant with life since beginning, and the biosphere was right from the start pregnant of mankind. Francesco Gaeta

Over the ages and stages of our human wonderment, by turns an aboriginal, mystic animism was overtaken by a sterile, mechanical physics, especially in the last century. But into a new millennium, an emergent transition to a global, personsphere collaboration seems on the way to quantifying a conducive uniVerse and procreative geobiosphere. Two prime aspects involve living systems reaching deeper into a fertile chemical ground, and how such material substrates are becoming spontaneously active. As one now reviews in mid 2020, an evolutionary developmental gestation can be perceived all the way from a singular cosmic origin to humankinder’s worldwide sentience. But this revolutionary reproductive reanimation has not yet been well documented and commonly recognized. We offer these many annotated references, almost 9,000 in all, to respectfully help reveal and aver an innately life-friendly, amniotic milieu. This present section, along with Consilience of Biology and Physics, Systems Physics, Systems Chemistry and Universal Evolution, attempt to flesh out a consummate array evidential advances in our midst.

2020: Over the ages and stages of our human wonderment, by turns an aboriginal, mystic animism was replaced by a sterile mechanical physics, especially in the last century. But into the 21st century, an emergent transition to personsphere collaborations seems on the way to quantifying and recovering a procreative geobiosphere in an organically conducive uniVerse. Two aspects involve living systems reaching and rooting deeper into a material ground, and how such basic substrates are now seen as spontaneously fertile. Circa 2020, an evolutionary developmental gestation might be glimpsed from a singular ecosmic origin all the way to humankinder’s worldwide sentience.

Azarian, Bobby. The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness and Cosmic Complexity. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2022.
Artime, Oriol and Manlio De Domenico. From the Origin of Life to Pandemics: Emergent Phenomena in Complex Systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. May 2022.
Bezgodov, Aleksandr and Konstantin Barezhev. The Origin of Planetary Ethics in the Philosophy of Russian Cosmism. UK: Xlibris, 2019.
Branscomb, Elbert and Michael Russell. On the Beneficent Thickness of Water. Interface Focus.October, 2019.
Canup, Robin and Philip Christensen, Co-Chairs. Origins, Worlds and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2022.
Cockell, Charles. The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution. New York: Basic Books, 2018.
Conway Morris, Simon. The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe Became Self-Aware. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2015.
Fontana, Walter. From Computation to Life: The Challenge of a Science of Organization. www.walterfontana.zone/writings
Gould, Roy. Universe in Creation: A New Understanding of the Big Bang and the Emergence of Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018

Gordon, Richard and Alexei Sharov, eds. Habitability of the Universe before Earth. Amsterdam: Academic Press/Elsevier, 2017.
Hazen, Robert. Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything. New York: Norton, 2019.
Kuppers, Bernd-Olaf. The Language of Living Matter: How Molecules Acquire Meaning. International: Springer Frontiers, 2021.
Ravishankara, A. R., et al. Ravishankara, A. R., et al. Complex and Yet Predictable: The Message of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.119/2, 2022.
Volk, Tyler. Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Walker, Sara, et al, eds. From Matter to Life: Information and Causality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Wuppuluri, Shyam and Ian Stewart, eds. Electrons to Elephants to Elections. International: Springer Frontiers, 2022.

2023:

ABSCICON 2017. www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2017. A copious site for this latest Astrobiology Science Conference held in April at the Phoenix Marriot Mesa. Its general subject is Diverse Life and its Detection on Different Worlds as Earthside exoplanetary studies grow in breadth and sophistication. Five main sections are Astrobiology as a Human Endeavor, Solar System Sites, Exoplanets, Origin and Evolution of Life, and New Technologies and Techniques. A Program and Abstracts page, along with an Author Index of several hundred presenters offers a wealth of info. We note a plenary talk, The Theory of Recursive Abiotic Evolution by Leroy Cronin, also Understanding Real-World Open-Ended Systems by Alyssa Adams and Sara Walker, Combinatorial Selection in the Prebiotic Environment by David Deamer and Bruce Damer, and Is There No Scientific Essence of Life? by philosopher Kelly Smith. However these endeavors yet remain “What” descriptors, sans any sense of an implied “Why” greater genesis which seems as innately made for evolutionary life, mind and a special planet able to achieve such a witness. We cite three exemplary descriptors for its flavor.

Sustained Habitability, Life, and the Biosignatures of a Dynamic Early Earth: Earth has remained inhabited for most of its dynamic history, despite experiencing changes as dramatic as a warming Sun and cooling interior; the initiation and evolution of plate tectonics; continents nucleating, growing, stabilizing, and then interacting for the first time; climatic extremes; and fundamental shifts in the redox state of surface environments. Relevant disciplines include molecular evolution, geomicrobiology and synthetic biology, gene and network reconstruction, the evolution of key proteins and metabolic pathways, plate tectonics, biotic and abiotic processes on land, nonmarine aquatic systems, evolving ocean chemistry, climatic and paleoecological drivers, nutrient models, biospheric oxygenation, deep-shallow Earth interactions, and the emergence of complex life.

Major Transitions in Evolution: How and why complex organisms evolve remain fundamental questions in astrobiology. On Earth, complex life has evolved through a series of ‘major transitions’, in which formerly autonomous individuals become parts of new, higher-level individuals. For example, chromosomes are thought to have evolved from autonomous genetic replicators, eukaryotes from multiple prokaryotic ancestors, multicellular organisms from unicellular ancestors, and eusocial ‘superorganisms’ from solitary multicellular ancestors. This session will focus on experimental, comparative and theoretical approaches to understanding the evolution of higher levels of organization or new forms of individuality. Topics include chemical replicators, experimental evolution, systems biology, biophysics, phylogenetic reconstruction, comparative genomics, paleontology and molecular paleontology.

Astrobiology ‘Omics’: This session addresses the rapidly evolving field of meta-omics and systems biology as it pertains to microbial ecosystems. Over the past decade the rapid expansion of –omics related datasets in astrobiology (e.g., proteomics, metabolomics, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics) has rapidly shifted reductionist or components-based biology to a more holistic systems biology approach to examining complex biological processes and ecosystems. This session explores the evolutionary and ecological implications of systems biology approaches in concert with developments in statistical and computational approaches.

Cosmic Evolution. www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution. A panoramic and informative website created by astrophysicist Eric Chaisson and hosted by Tufts University Wright Center for Science Education which graphically tracks through seven stages the flight of the cosmological arrow of life and planetary culture.

III International Conference “Biosphere Origin and Evolution. http://conf.nsc.ru/BOE-2011/en.. Organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences, this major assembly on the island of Crete in October 2011, situates our inquisitive living planet within an innately fertile cosmic spacescape. Six Trend areas are Astrobiology, Prebiotic Evolution, Emergence of Cells, Early Living Biosphere, Eukaryotes, and Evolution of the Geo-Biological Systems in Phanerozoic. Twelve plenary lectures included “Earth and Planets Origin” by Mikhail Marov of the V. I. Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry, “Molecular Colonies as a Pre-Cellular form of Compartmentalization” by Alexander Chetverin of the RAS Institute of Protein Research, and “Emergent Life Drinks Orderliness from the Environment” by Michael Russell, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Examples of 28 Oral Presentations are “Hot Abiogenesis and Early Biospheric Evolution” by Helen Piontkivska, Charles Lineweaver, and David Schwartzman, Russia, Australia and the United States, “A Fractal Spatiotemporal Structure of an Open Living System and Fractal Properties of Dynamic Systems on Cosmic Scales” Victor Gusev, Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, and “Stages of Chemical Evolution in Circumsolar Disk” by Valery Snytnikov, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis. Poster Presentations included “Organic Universe & Spontaneous Self-Organizing Systems” by Aditya Kolarkar of the Raisoni Academy of Engineering & Technology, India. Some 276 pages of Abstracts for all contributions can be accessed by clicking that word on the above web page.

But one may glean much more by an overview of the whole visionary congress. In this “west,” our mechanical physics, cosmology, and evolutionary theory profess a moribund material world and multiverse, whereof life and human are alien accidents. Ptolemaic would be a compliment. The “rest” of the world, however, alternatively assumes a conducive, biological paradigm and milieu whose universal gestation gives rise to a human-like planetary phenomenon able to reconstruct how cosmos and child came to be. And in this regard, a further sharp distinction can be recorded. While, e.g., the index for Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here in a pointless universe has 150 men and no women, the 180 plus speaker list is evenly divided between female and male researchers. This is a non-existent gender balance for western scientific fields, check any journal board of directors, the ratio is at most 10 to 1.

*** Abbott, Derek, et al, eds. Quantum Aspects of Life. Singapore: World Scientific, 2008. With Paul Davies as a co-editor, contributors such as Seth Lloyd, Roger Penrose, Lloyd Demetrius, Arun Pati, Stuart Hameroff, and Anita Goel consider whether quantum phenomena can be theoretically discovered to contain an innate, supportive propensity for biological florescence. In other words, another attempt to back physics into a way to realize an organic materiality pregnant with life and mind and persons. The quotes try to say this, but are caught up in their argot and beg translation from mechanical computation. Indian Institute of Science’s Apoorva Patel’s paper “Towards Understanding the Origin of Genetic Languages” is indeed an effort to move from the hardware/software scheme.

The idea is this. The environment serves as a sort of measuring device, and, by hypothesis, it somehow selects for measurement a quantum variable relevant for life. Then even if the amplitude is small, life will be “projected out” of the superposition by the measurement-like interaction. It may even be “steered” towards life by the inverse-Zeno effect. But this implies the environment somehow favours life – that life is “built into” nature in a preordained manner. So an element of teleology remains. (Abbott, et al, 11)

As life continued to evolve more and more variants and more and more complex forms, we should not be surprised that, amongst those forms, new types of computational universality arose. Human language, together with the mental apparatus that supports it, represents a remarkable and wonderful type of computational universality. (Seth Lloyd, 28)

The languages of DNA and proteins are argued to be the optimal solutions to the information processing tasks they carry out. The analysis also suggests simpler predecessors to these languages, and provides fascinating clues about their origin. Obviously, a comprehensive unraveling of the puzzle of life would have a lot to say about what we may design or convert ourselves into. (Apoorva Patel, 187)

Aerts, Diederik, et al. On the Foundations of the Theory of Evolution. arXiv:1212.0107. Online December 2012, Aerts with coauthors from Belgium, Poland, and Canada including Liane Gabora contribute to the growing effort to forge a more realistic, innovative theory for both quantum domains and its subsequent apply to a novel evolutionary synthesis. From an editorial view, the meritorious paper is filled with native technical terminologies that beg translation to a common parlance to express their deep insights. Once more, post-selection only is seen as inadequate as an explanation. A turn akin to Michael Denton’s independently active “natural law” (a premise of this site) is advised to allow a prior generative agency at work to be admitted. In regard, quantum realms are seen to possess “potentialities” which under due conditions become vitally “actualized.” So life’s processional emergence, via this “more general theory,” can in fact become rooted in a fertile substantial essence. Search Aerts and Gabora herein, and arXiv for more essays. And when might a sufficient chorus arise to say “methinks” it is a cosmos to children genesis uniVerse?

Darwinism conceives evolution as a consequence of random variation and natural selection, hence it is based on a materialistic, i.e. matter-based, view of science inspired by classical physics. But matter in itself is considered a very complex notion in modern physics. More specifically, at a microscopic level, matter and energy are no longer retained within their simple form, and quantum mechanical models are proposed wherein potential form is considered in addition to actual form. In this paper we propose an alternative to standard Neodarwinian evolution theory. We suggest that the starting point of evolution theory cannot be limited to actual variation whereupon is selected, but to variation in the potential of entities according to the context. We therefore develop a formalism, referred to as Context driven Actualization of Potential (CAP), which handles potentiality and describes the evolution of entities as an actualization of potential through a reiterated interaction with the context.

As in quantum mechanics, lack of knowledge of the entity, its context, or the interaction between context and entity leads to different forms of indeterminism in relation to the state of the entity. This indeterminism generates a non-Kolmogorovian distribution of probabilities that is different from the classical distribution of chance described by Darwinian evolution theory, which stems from a 'actuality focused', i.e. materialistic, view of nature. We also present a quantum evolution game that highlights the main differences arising from our new perspective and shows that it is more fundamental to consider evolution in general, and biological evolution in specific, as a process of actualization of potential induced by context, for which its material reduction is only a special case. (Abstract)

Alper, Joseph. It Came from Outer Space. Astronomy. November, 2002. New spectral evidence implies that the universe generates and is filled with precursor biomolecules for life which constantly bathe the earth in their flow.

Anderson, Mark. Entangled Life. Discover. February, 2009. An update on how an increasing number of biological processes such as olfaction and neural responses are indeed found to draw upon quantum phenomena. But are we, is science, mindful of a greater cosmic creation waiting to be “discovered,” that is by such implication inherently organic in kind?

Arndt, Markus, et al. Quantum Physics Meets Biology. HPSF Journal. Advance Online, 2009. Physicists Arndt, from the University of Vienna, Thomas Juffmann, Oxford University, and Vlatko Vedral, from both Oxford and the National University of Singapore, show in this status review how a real convergence is quite underway from both approaches. While biological research is lately sending roots into quantum realms, as the quote notes, quantum theories now branch into complex systems. Both sciences have historically started with discrete, particulate phenomena, still much the case, but are increasingly noticing interconnective relations. When, one wonders, can such a synthesis, as it proceeds, reveal a “systems universe” that can be realized as truly Organic in kind?

Quantum physics and biology have long been regarded as unrelated disciplines, describing nature at the inanimate microlevel on the one hand and living species on the other hand. Over the past decades the life sciences have succeeded in providing ever more and refined explanations of macroscopic phenomena that were based on an improved understanding of molecular structures and mechanisms. Simultaneously, quantum physics, originally rooted in a world-view of quantum coherences, entanglement, and other nonclassical effects, has been heading toward systems of increasing complexity. The present perspective article shall serve as a “pedestrian guide” to the growing interconnections between the two fields. (Abstract)

While in the days of Darwin and Mendel the life sciences were mainly focusing on botany or zoology, modern biology, pharmacology, and medicine are deeply rooted in a growing understanding of molecular interactions and organic information processing. (1)

Bailly, Francis and Giuseppe Longo. Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: The Physical Singularity of Life. London: Imperial College Press, 2011. CNRS, France, physicist philosophers, as the quotes infer, contribute to the 21st century reunion and resolve of biological life and cognition within a substantial, conducive cosmos that it evidentially arises from. An initial course through Mathematical Concepts and Physical Objects, Indeterminations, Space and Time from Physics to Biology, Invariances, Symmetries and Breakings, and so on, arrives at Extended Criticality: The Physical Singularity of Life Phenomena. But as many of these efforts, a distinction is not yet seen or made between the vying, mingling models of mechanical and organic. For they represent two diametric forms of matter or materiality. For the Ptolemaic moribund multiverse, matter as smashed in Colliders has no vital spontaneity of its own, while as this endeavor avers, an inherent propensity to form self-active, emergent, nonlinear dynamical autopoietic systems abides. See Longo’s extensive publications page at www.di.ens.fr/~longo/download.html for papers with Bailly, Mael Montevil, and Stuart Kauffman.

There is no doubt that there exists a reality beyond ourselves, which enters into “friction” with our actions upon it and which, moreover, “canalizes” them. Husserl uses a word from the idealist tradition to designate this reality: he considers the notion of transcendence. In a very common interpretation of the word, and quite independently from Husserl, the following deduction is usually made, first in physics, then in mathematics: the “properties” of the world are transcendent. They are therefore “already there,” they pre-exist. (23)

It was not by chance that the first mathematical models of biological systems appealed to and borrowed from those of thermodynamics, in particular models of cascade effects in bifurcations of thermodynamical systems (Prigogine), followed by models of emergence of self-organized critical behavior (Haken, Kauffman, Varela), and application of fractal geometry (Mandelbrot), and chaotic regimes (Babloyanz) to an organic context. (132)

In this chapter (Extended Criticality: The Physical Singularity of Life Phenomena) we propose to consider living systems as “coherent critical structures,” though extended in space and time, their unity being ensured through global causal relation between levels of organization. This may be seen as a further contribution to the large amount of work already done on the theme of self-organized criticality. (225)

The idea of using the physics of criticality, with its “formation of coherent structures” to analyze the emergence of the structural stability of living phenomena, is also at the center of our analyses; because over the last twenty years, the physics of criticality has been developing an appealing theory of the emergence of organized forms in the presence of critical transitions. Those structures “constitute themselves all alone, hence critically self-organizes. (232)

Bains, William and Dirk Schulze-Makuch. The Cosmic Zoo: The (Near) Inevitability of the Evolution of Complex, Macroscopic Life. Life. 6/3, 2016. The astrochemist authors have postings at MIT Atmospheric and Planetary Science and the Technical University of Berlin. Akin to Lingam & Loeb 2018, they avail a transitional sequence of “key innovations” that appear to distinguish life’s Earthly course from protocells, oxygenesis, multicularity, land animals, intelligence and human culture, along with possible substages. This evident progression, while tinkered and circuitous, does seem oriented toward a generic homo observant sapience. Three working options are cited: Critical Path, Random Walk, and Many Paths. While seen as “highly anthropocentric,” it is concluded that evolutionary developments on stable exo-biospheres will likely follow this axial pathway to complex, cognitive creatures.

Life on Earth provides a unique biological record from single-cell microbes to technologically intelligent life forms. Our evolution is marked by several major steps or innovations along a path of increasing complexity from microbes to space-faring humans. Here we identify various major key innovations, and use an analytical toolset consisting of a set of models to analyse how likely each key innovation is to occur. Our conclusion is that once the origin of life is accomplished, most of the key innovations can occur rather readily. The conclusion for other worlds is that if the origin of life can occur rather easily, we should live in a cosmic zoo, as the innovations necessary to lead to complex life will occur with high probability given sufficient time and habitat. On the other hand, if the origin of life is rare, then we might live in a rather empty universe. (Abstract)

Balazs, Bela. The Role of Life in the Cosmological Replication. http://astro.elte.hu/~bab/Role_Life_Univp.rtf. A paper from the 2002 International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL)conference. A Hungarian astronomer sets aside the old view of a sterile universe to report on the gathering vision of a “super-Copernican” revolution which returns life, intelligence and humans to central significance. A "biocosmological" model is proposed whereby an animate universe develops into a knowing sentience capable of carrying on this emergent transformation. This self-organization evolves along a path of complexity and consciousness to the extent the entire cosmos may become able to replicate itself within its vast multiverse.

Barrow, John, et al, eds. Fitness of the Cosmos for Life: Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. In the tradition of Lawrence Henderson’s classic The Fitness of the Environment, these proceedings of a Templeton conference go beyond critical physical parameters just right for our anthropic presence and show that many properties of biochemical and cellular materiality also seem tailored for the appearance and evolution of living entities. By this ‘biothropic’ addition, cosmic nature appears to exhibit a fertile propensity for life and persons.

Notable papers such as by Simon Conway Morris argue for an evolutionary inherency which recurs from microbes to societies; an inevitable ‘cosmic convergence’ toward intelligence by Julian Chela-Flores, and the presence of intrinsic natural laws guiding protein forms as seen by Michael Denton. The usual players each weigh in: Paul Davies, Owen Gingerich, John Haught, Harold Morowitz, and so on. But with an authorship of 25 men and no women, schooled in the old inhospitable universe, sans a reflective faculty which could realize the grand genesis discovery it portends.

The discovery that the protein universe consists of a finite set of natural forms in a sense completes the molecular biological revolution, revealing finally – five decades after the nature and biological purpose of DNA and RNA were first elucidated – the essential nature of the second great class of biopolymers. It reveals that the purpose of the genetic system is to turn out endless adaptive variants of a set of invariant natural forms. The great complexity of the folds indicates perhaps more clearly than any other previous discovery in the biological sciences, that very great biological complexity may be lawful and need not necessarily be contingent. (Denton 269)

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