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

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

Herdewijn, Piet and M. Volkan Kisakürek. On Chemistry Leading to Life's Origin. Chemistry & Biodiversity. 4/4, 2007. An editorial for a special issue with this title wherein senior scientists such as Christian de Duve, Gunter Wachtershauser, Sandra Pizzarello, Pier Luigi Liusi, and Andre Brack try to put down roots into a newly perceived fecund materiality whose propensities for non-equilibrium, dynamic self-organization appear to be increasingly conducive for life and evolution.

Ho, Mae-Wan. Organism and Psyche in a Participatory Universe. Loye, David, ed. The Evolutionary Outrider. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. In the process philosophy tradition of Bergson and Whitehead, a biophysicist professes that space-time is organic in kind, whole organisms are the proper subject and its motive drive is not conflict but relational love.

Huber, Florian, et al. Emergent Complexity of the Cytoskeleton: From Single Filaments to Tissue. Advances in Physics. 62/1, 2013. With Keywords such as “self-organization, self-assembly, emergent properties, multifunctionality,” this 112 page issue, with 600 references, could illustrate the worldwide revolution in the physical and biological sciences. As the Abstract and quotes note, University of Leipzig biophysicists show how living systems from polymers to people can be described by the same complex dynamic system concepts and principles that traditional physics, in some translation, has now adopted and assimilated. The paper itself, within evolutionary biology, also signifies a turn to admit generative natural phenomena, prior to selection alone.

And this respected journal since 1952 of “condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics” could be a good indicator of this shifting paradigm with an initial 2000 (49/4) paper “Cooperative Self-Organization of Microorganisms” by Eshel Ben-Jacob, et al, and in 2001 “Biological Evolution and Statistical Physics” by Barbara Drossel (50/2). Its full content went online in 2010, as many others, accelerating this global collaboration and discovery. Similar content revisions over the same period could be tracked in other scientific periodicals such as Physical Review Letters, Physica A, and New Journal of Physics.

Despite their overwhelming complexity, living cells display a high degree of internal mechanical and functional organization which can largely be attributed to the intracellular biopolymer scaffold, the cytoskeleton. Being a very complex system far from thermodynamic equilibrium, the cytoskeleton's ability to organize is at the same time challenging and fascinating. The extensive amounts of frequently interacting cellular building blocks and their inherent multifunctionality permits highly adaptive behavior and obstructs a purely reductionist approach. Nevertheless the physics approach has already proved to be extremely successful in revealing very fundamental concepts of cytoskeleton organization and behavior. This review aims at introducing the physics of the cytoskeleton ranging from single biopolymer filaments to multicellular organisms. Throughout this wide range of phenomena, the focus is set on the intertwined nature of the different physical scales (levels of complexity) that give rise to numerous emergent properties by means of self-organization or self-assembly. (Abstract)

Most parts of what we feel is “the world we live in” consist of many intertwined levels or scales leading to an incredible complexity. Especially what we call “life” exists far from thermodynamic equilibrium and comprises an almost uncountable number of interacting elements. This might explain why physicists stayed away from soft and especially living matter for such a long time. The grand achievements of early twentieth century physics tell us little about how to deal with complex systems yet “the world we live in” seems nothing but a complex system. The cell remains in a highly organized state despite its many components and avoids the restrictions of thermodynamic equilibrium through permanent energy dissipation. Obviously, we need radically new methods and concepts to tackle this complexity, a need we share with many different disciplines, ranging from physics to sociology. This goes along with a certain vagueness of the term complex system which can be associated with anything from a few molecules to macroeconomics. In this context, the concepts of emergence, as well as self-organization and self-assembly became increasingly popular and are commonly applied in many scientific disciplines. Not surprisingly, these concepts attracted a particularly wide interest in biophysics since they give rise to the formation of complex structures from simpler elements. (3, excerpts)

Looking at the persistent, cooperative functioning of hundreds of different proteins, one often tends to think of cells as highly complex machines which can be misleading as some authors pointed out. Whereas a machine is designed to fulfill a specific task, an organic system designs itself. Machines are built, organisms build themselves. This is exactly what makes life robust and possible. (7) In reconstituted bottom-up systems, the difference becomes particularly striking. When a number of interacting elements are simply “thrown together”, highly organized cooperative behavior suddenly appears without any rational design. (7)

Ianeselli, Alan, et al. Physical Non-Equilibria for Prebiotic Nucleic Acid Chemistry. Nature Reviews Physics. January, 2023. As the Abstract says, seven Ludwig Maximilians University biophysicists including Dieter Braun proceed with research studies to an extent that it well appears our ecosmos environs seems to be innately graced with a robust life-bearing fertility. By this view, its evolutionary emergence is just now reaching its planetary phase of our intelligent retrospective. The second quote is from Braun’s website, which provides an apt context.

The prebiotic replication of DNA and RNA is a complex interplay between chemistry and the environment. Factors that have effects include temperature, monovalent and bivalent ions, the pH of water, ultraviolet irradiation and gaseous CO2. We discuss primordial conditions for the replicative reactions on the early Earth, such as heated rock pores, hydrothermal vents, evaporating ponds, icy regimes, and ultraviolet irradiation. Our expectation is that the nonlinear autonomous evolution dynamics provided by microfluidic non-equilibria make the origin of life understandable and experimentally testable. (Abstract)

In our LMU systems biophysics lab, we reconstruct the early cycles of Darwinian evolution. by a focus on initial replication, emergence of a phenotype and selection in our understanding of the origins of life. It has become clearer how the first molecules of life could have arisen. The next step is to learn how genetic molecules can polymerize to long oligonucleotides and trigger replication cycles. Our conceptual guide is that life persists far from equilibrium by way of a vital supply of negentropy for replication and selection. (D. Braun web page)

Impey, Chris. The New Habitable Zones. Sky & Telescope. October, 2009. Life, especially its microbial form, appears hardier every day. The latest research on such “extremophiles” finds bacteria to exist in the most unexpected ranges of temperature, pressure, and chemical environments. Add the newly perceived propensity for all sorts of stellar objects to proliferate planets and the orbital and celestial spacescapes conducive to life and its evolution becomes much expanded. A further consequence accrues with regard to what kind of universe we find ourselves. Rather than an accidental material machine, the cosmos seems more and more to possess an organic, quickening essence of which its human phenomenon can achieve an intended sentient witness. (See also Impey's 2007 book The Living Cosmos.)

The possibility of alien microbes may not quicken the pulse of someone waiting for a message from ET, but clearly we’re poised for a new step in the Copernican Revolution: the demonstration that we live in a biological universe. (25)

Impey, Chris, ed. Talking About Life: Conservations on Astrobiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Due October, interviews with the scientists and writers listed below, about the latest lights on cosmic life, in these five areas: Introduction, Earth, Solar System, Exoplanets, and Frontiers.

Timothy Ferris, Iris Fry, Steven Dick, Ann Druyan, Pinky Nelson, Neil Tyson, Steve Benner, William Bains, Roger Buick, Lynn Rothschild, John Baross, Joe Kirschvink, Andrew Knoll, Simon Conway Morris, Roger Hanlon, Lori Marino, Chris McKay, David Grinspoon, Jonathan Lunine, Carolyn Porco, Laurie Leshin, Guy Consolmagno, Peter Smith, Alan Boss, Geoff Marcy, Debra Fischer, Sara Seager, David Charbonneau, Vikki Meadows, Jill Tarter, Seth Shostak, Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Paul Davies, Martin Rees, Ben Bova, Jennifer Michael Hecht.

Ingold, Tim. Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought. Ethnos. 71\1, 2006. In this Stockholm Museum of Ethnography journal, the University of Aberdeen anthropologist argues for a living, sensate, relational nature and cosmos, now to be appreciated as a continuous birthing. An organism in this web of life “…is reconfigured as an outward expression of an inner design.” So a fundamental change is merited in how we regard our abiding cosmos before a more life-friendly creation can flourish.

Animacy, then, is not a property of persons imaginatively projected onto the things with which they perceive themselves to be surrounded. Rather it is the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence. The animacy of the lifeworld, in short, is not the result of an infusion of spirit into substance, or of agency into materiality, but is rather ontologically prior to their differentiation. (10)

Ivanitskii, Genrikh, R. 21st Century: What is Life from the Perspective of Physics? Physics-Uspekhi. 180/4, 2010. A senior Russian Academy of Sciences biophysicist concludes that the past several decades of research have increasingly removed all boundaries between animate and so-called inorganic material nature. In Table 1 noted below, these traits are listed for Life in one column: ordered hierarchical structure, open systems, response to stimuli, store information, develop more complexity, propagate, self-regulate and regenerate, metabolize, exhibit taxis, and depart from equilibrium. “Nonliving Matter” in the other column is then found to similarly possess each of these qualities. For Russian roots, the author evokes the biosphere and noosphere of Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), whereupon “living matter” progressively manifests into mind and reason. A wide world example of how an organic cosmos is now readily admissible, worth several quotes, if we can just allow its perception.

Abstract. The evolution of the biophysical paradigm over 65 years since the publication in 1944 of Erwin Schrodinger's What is Life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cell is reviewed. Based on the advances in molecular genetics, it is argued that all the features characteristic of living systems can also be found in nonliving ones. Ten paradoxes in logic and physics are analyzed that allow defining life in terms of a spatial-temporal hierarchy of structures and combinatory probabilistic logic. From the perspective of physics, life can be defined as resulting from a game involving interactions of matter one part of which acquires the ability to remember the success (or failure) probabilities from the previous rounds of the game, thereby increasing its chances for further survival in the next round. This part of matter is currently called living matter. (327)

It is difficult to offer a substantive definition of living matter. Many textbooks list a number of traits supposed to be characteristic of living organisms, but on closer examination they prove to be equally inherent in objects regarded as non-living. Table 1 (Characteristics of Living and Nonliving Matter) illustrates such a comparison. It exposes the futility of any attempt to define a single universal evidence of life. In other words, living systems do not possess properties not found in various nonliving objects. (329-330)

Conclusion. Life constitutes an integrated system (biosphere) having memory and capable of directional motion, self-propagation, metabolism, regulated energy flux, and reproduction. Life from the point of view of physics can be briefly described as a result of a game process, an interplay between part of the system and its environment. During the game, this part acquired an ability to remember the probabilities of gains and losses in previous rounds, which gave it a chance to exist in the following ones. (353)

The following epitaph on the tombstone of certain deleted species would be appropriate: “They were impenetrable to new ideas and could not withstand changes in their environment.” The epitaph on another tombstone would read: “They did not learn to remember nor did they strive for integration because they behaved chaotically.” (353)

Jolley, Craig and Trevor Douglas. A Network Theoretical Approach to Understanding Interstellar Chemistry. Astrophysical Journal. 722/1921, 2010. From the Montana State University, Biogeocatalysis Research Center, an exercise about how even a celestial medium actually filled with complex organic molecules can exhibit the same network geometry as everywhere else. In regard then, one might say that both interstellar and intercellular phases of node and link connectivity are quite identical, as they spring from the same cosmic genetic code.

Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. A popular introduction to Kauffman’s innovative complex systems theories which make a prime contribution to this field. Since their autocatalytic dynamics equally apply to the human phase, by the implications of this perspective people are active members of a spontaneously self-organizing cosmos.

If we, and past eons of scholars, have not begun to understand the power of self-organization as a source of order, neither did Darwin. The order that emerges in enormous, randomly assembled, interlinked networks of binary variables is almost certainly merely the harbinger of similar emergent order in whole varieties of complex systems. We may be finding new foundations for the order that graces the living world. If so, what a change in our view of life and our place must await us. Selection is not the sole source of order after all. Order vast, order ordained, order for free. We may be at home in the universe in ways we have hardly begun to comprehend. (92)

Kauffman, Stuart, et al. Propagating Organization: An Enquiry. Biology & Philosophy. 23/1, 2008. Six scientists engaged in what could be termed “systems biophysics” wrestle with how semiotic information works to impel energized matter into states of increasing, constrained order in a biotic cosmos.

Kondepudi, Dilip, et al. End-Directed Evolution and the Emergence of Energy-Seeking Behavior in a Complex System. Physical Review E. 91/050902, 2016. We note this technical paper by DK, Wake Forest University, with Bruce Kay and James Dixon, University of Connecticut, because it quantifies an inherently fertile, life-breeding, self-developing physical cosmos.

Self-organization in a voltage-driven nonequilibrium system, consisting of conducting beads immersed in a viscous medium, gives rise to a dynamic tree structure that exhibits wormlike motion. The complex motion of the beads driven by the applied field, the dipole-dipole interaction between the beads and the hydrodynamic flow of the viscous medium, results in a time evolution of the tree structure towards states of lower resistance or higher dissipation and thus higher rates of entropy production. Thus emerges a remarkably organismlike energy-seeking behavior. The dynamic tree structure draws the energy needed to form and maintain its structure, moves to positions at which it receives more energy, and avoids conditions that lower available energy. The emergence of energy-seeking behavior in a nonliving complex system that is extremely simple in its construct is unexpected. Along with the property of self-healing, this system, in a rudimentary way, exhibits properties that are analogous to those we observe in living organisms. Thermodynamically, the observed diverse behavior can be characterized as end-directed evolution to states of higher rates of entropy production. (Abstract)

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