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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

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

Martinez, Carlos Flores. SETI in the Light of Cosmic Convergent Evolution. Acta Astronautica. Online August, 2014. In this well written and referenced essay, a University of Heidelberg graduate student bravely contends that an intrinsic natural biogenesis is now robustly evident, if one is so inclined. A glimpse is thus achieved of a Copernican revolution from an old mechanical model to an epic revision which is increasingly obvious and proven across unifying sciences and fractal galaxies. See also a later paper by the author online November 2014 in this journal that draws upon growing evidence for a convergent evolution as a guide to seeking and finding astrolife.

Here it will be argued that nothing in astrobiology makes sense except in the light of “Cosmic Convergent Evolution” (CCE). This view of life contends that natural selection is a universal force of nature that leads to the emergence of similarly adapted life forms in analogous planetary biospheres. Although SETI historically preceded the rise of astrobiology that we have witnessed in the recent decade, one of its main tenets from the beginning was the convergence of life on a cosmic scale toward intelligent behavior and subsequent communication via technological means. The question of cultural convergence in terms of symbolic exchange, language and scientific capabilities between advanced interstellar civilizations has been the subject of ongoing debate. However, at the core of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence lies in essence a biological problem since even post-biological extraterrestrial intelligences must have had an origin based on self-replicating biopolymers. Thus, SETI assumes a propensity of the Universe towards biogenesis in accordance with CCE, a new evolutionary concept which posits the multiple emergence of life across the Cosmos. (Abstract excerpt)

Matteucci, Francesca, et al. The Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way. arXiv:1705.09596. A paper by Universita di Trieste, Osservatoria Astronomico di Bologna and Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile researchers. presented at the 2016 Mondello (Sicily) Frontier Research in Astrophysics II workshop. To then reflect, an auspicious human propensity and significance seems robustly evident whence worldwide collaborations can proceed to reconstruct a “galactic astroarchaeology.” What kind of cosmos requires its own consciously perceived self-description? Whom are we individual and collective sapient beings to do this, for what purpose? The conference contents in to be published by the Proceedings of Science online.

We will discuss some highlights concerning the chemical evolution of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. First we will describe the main ingredients necessary to build a model for the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. Then we will illustrate some Milky Way models which includes detailed stellar nucleosynthesis and compute the evolution of a large number of chemical elements, including C, N, O, α-elements, Fe and heavier. The main observables and in particular the chemical abundances in stars and gas will be considered. A comparison theory-observations will follow and finally some conclusions from this astroarchaeological approach will be derived. (Abstract)

McCabe, Michael and Holly Lucas. On the Origin and Evolution of Life in the Galaxy. International Journal of Astrobiology. 9/4, 2010. University of Portsmouth, UK, mathematicians extrapolate the Major Evolutionary Transitions scale, whose seven stages are here seen as (critical) self-organization, biomolecules, RNA to DNA, endosymbiosis, sexuality, multicellularity, and language, on to expanded celestial realms. In a similar vein to Milan Cirkovic (2012) and others, still another effort is made to reconceive a genesis cosmos by way of these robust, oriented biological emergences.

A simple stochastic model for evolution, based upon the need to pass a sequence of n critical steps is applied to both terrestrial and extraterrestrial origins of life. In the former case, the time at which humans have emerged during the habitable period of Earth suggests a value of n=4. Progressively adding earlier evolutionary transitions gives an optimum fit when n=5, implying either that their initial transitions are not critical or that habitability began around 6 Ga ago. The origin of life on Mars or elsewhere within the Solar System is excluded by the latter case and the simple anthropic argument is that extraterrestrial life is scarce in the Universe because it does not have time to evolve. Alternatively, the timescale can be extended if the migration of basic progenotic material to Earth is possible. If extra transitions are included in the model to allow for Earth migration, then the start of habitability needs to be even earlier than 6 Ga ago. Our present understanding of Galactic habitability and dynamics does not exclude this possibility. We conclude that Galactic punctuated equilibrium, proposed as a way round the anthropic problem, is not the only way of making life more common in the Galaxy. (Abstract)

McFadden, Johnjoe. Quantum Evolution. New York: Norton, 2001. Explores the hypothesis that the deep roots of emergent, sentient life can be traced to quantum principles.

Meyer-Ortmanns, Hildegard and Stefan Thurner, eds. Principles of Evolution: From the Planck Epoch to Complex Multicellular Life. Berlin: Springer, 2011. Jacobs University, Bremen, and University of Vienna systems physicists edit a significant volume from a 2009 Darwin conference that ranges much beyond selection to admit and entertain a stratified self-organization from cosmos to civilizations. In so doing, scientists and scholars are learning to view life’s sequential passage from universe to human, physical to planetary, in true terms of recurrent, dynamic, complex adaptive systems. Indeed “universality” is often used, whence evolution appears as a progressive iteration, as if some kind of program running itself. Chapters by Thurner, Bartelmann, Dehmelt and Bastiaens, and Frey and Reichenbach are reviewed elsewhere. But the academic endeavor seems constrained by a vested reductive method, understandably betwixt the mechanist Ptolemaic and organicist Copernican revolution. A natural philosophy able to imagine a greater genesis creation as it manifestly springs from its parent to child genetic code still eludes.

With contributions from a team of leading experts, this volume provides a comprehensive survey of recent achievements in our scientific understanding of evolution. The questions it asks concern the beginnings of the universe, the origin of life and the chances of its arising at all, the role of contingency, and the search for universal features in the plethora of evolutionary phenomena. The tools employed stem from a range of disciplines including mathematics, physics, biochemistry and cell biology. Self-organization as an overarching concept is demonstrated in the most diverse areas: from galaxy formation in the universe to spindle and aster formation in the cell. Chemical master equations, population dynamics, and evolutionary game theory are presented as suitable frameworks for understanding the universal mechanisms and organizational principles observed in a wide range of living units, ranging from cells to societies. (Publisher)

Morowitz, Harold and Eric Smith. Energy Flow and the Organization of Life. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper. 06-08-029, 2006. A biochemist and a thermodynamicist propose how living entities can be understood as an “inevitable” consequence of cosmic energetic properties. This imperative is then expressed on earth by geological processes which "forced life into existence." By their hypothesis, a universal metabolic biogenesis is traced from life’s first earthly appearance to its recapitulation in each organism today.

A deterministic emergence of life would reflect an essential continuity between physics, chemistry, and biology. It would show that a part of the order we recognize as living is thermodynamic order inherent in the geosphere, and that some aspects of Darwinian selection are expressions of the likely simpler statistical mechanics of physical and chemical self-organization. (1)

Morowitz, Harold, et al. Ligand Field Theory and the Origin of Life as an Emergent Feature of the Periodic Table of Elements. Biological Bulletin. 219/1, 2010. With co-authors Vijayasarathy Srinivasan and Eric Smith, veteran George Mason University and Santa Fe Institute researchers move closer to quantify, qualify, and admit that material earthly and cosmic nature ought to be realized as intrinsically suitable for organic evolution and our reflective witness.

The underlying theme of this essay is to show that, following from ligand field theory of transition metals and the nature of ligands produced in prebiotic synthesis experiments, life— or at least network anabolism—becomes a plausible emergent feature of the periodic table of the elements. (1) What (George) Wald was attempting—an approach that we follow — was to map biochemistry onto the underlying quantum- mechanical logic of chemistry as exhibited in the periodic table of the elements. (2)

Morrison, Shaunna, et al. The Paleomineralogy of the Hadean Eon Revisited. Life. 8/4, 2018. This paper in a special issue Minerals and Origins of Life (Lambert herein) by SM, Simone Runyon and Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC continues Hazen’s decade long project (search) to prove that planetary and extraterrestrial materials are conducive substrates for life to originate. (The Hadean Era is some 4.6 – 4.0 billion years ago.) His work with colleagues goes on to imply that appropriate mineral formations evolve in reciprocal tandem with living systems. By these insight, a long list of prebiotic organic materials and mineral species can be identified. Redox gradients and other reactivities in the mix reveal a native inherency made and meant for life to appear and develop. See also, for example Titan Mineralogy: A Window on Organic Mineral Evolution in American Mineralogist (Vol. 103, 2018).

A preliminary list of plausible near-surface minerals present during Earth’s Hadean Eon (>4.0 Ga) should be expanded to include: (1) phases that might have formed by precipitation of organic crystals prior to the rise of predation by cellular life; (2) minerals associated with large bolide impacts, especially through the generation of hydrothermal systems in circumferential fracture zones; and (3) local formation of minerals with relatively oxidized transition metals through abiological redox processes, such as photo-oxidation. Additional mineral diversity arises from the occurrence of some mineral species that form more than one ‘natural kind’, each with distinct chemical and morphological characteristics that arise by different paragenetic processes. A rich variety of chemically reactive sites were thus available at the exposed surfaces of common Hadean rock-forming minerals. (Abstract)

Newman, Stuart and Marta Linde-Medina. Physical Determinants in the Emergence and Inheritance of Multicellular Form. Biological Theory. 8/3, 2013. The New York Medical College cell biologist, (search) and a University of Manchester life scientist, continue this general project, as it grows in numbers and veracity, to engage and characterize a physical materiality with its own dynamic spontaneity, along with a revised view of life’s evolution as influenced and guided by these formative forces, prior to selection. By this novel synthesis, as many concurrent postings aver, a grand (re)union of vitality and sentience, complexity and consciousness, with a conducive earthly ground and heavens is well underway. These are historic, revolutionary advances just reaching fruition. As the authors allude, these native nonlinear propensities, via “A New Physics of Condensed, Excitable Materials,” could be seen to take upon a genetic-like guise and agency. Life and persons are no longer accidental interlopers in an alien, pointless universe, but a significant cognizant phenomenon by which a self-creating genesis can discover itself.

We argue that the physics of complex materials and self-organizing processes should be made central to the biology of form. Rather than being encoded in genes, form emerges when cells and certain of their molecules mobilize physical forces, effects, and processes in a multicellular context. What is inherited from one generation to the next are not genetic programs for constructing organisms, but generative mechanisms of morphogenesis and pattern formation and the initial and boundary conditions for reproducing the specific traits of a taxon. There is no inherent antagonism between this “physicalist” perspective and genetics, since physics acts on matter, and gene products are essential material components of living systems whose variability affects the systems’ parameters. (Abstract)

Contemporary mesoscale physics utilizes concepts such as nonlinear oscillations, multistable dynamical systems, excitable media, reaction-diffusion, viscoelastic and other symmetry-breaking instabilities, chaos, and fractals, all of which were unknown to Newton or Darwin. All of these processes or effects are relevant to forms and patterns potentially assumed by developing tissues. It is in fact physically impossible for the morphology of living systems not to bear the imprint of these effects. (3) The modern sciences of mespscopic condensed excitable materials, however, show living matter (like other concensed, excitable systems) to be capable of self-organization by virtue of its intrinsic physical and chemical properties. But if inherent physical properties are the primary determinants of form, natural selection cannot play this central role. (Conclusion)

Newman, Stuart, et al. Before Programs: The Physical Origination of Multicellular Forms. International Journal of Development Biology. 50/2-3, 2006. In an issue on Developmental Morphodynamics, with co-authors Gabor Forgacs and Gerd Muller, theoretical insights into a substantial natural cosmos from which complex life will inexorably appear and arise. See also “Dynamical Patterning Modules” by Newman and Ramray Bhat in Physical Biology, 5/1, 2008, in a special issue on Physical Aspects of Developmental Biology.

Because the inherent physical properties, in their self-organizing capacities, but also conditioned by external parameters and extrinsic forces, can act as morphogenetic determinants, the dynamical, constraining and environmental aspects of develop The physical origination of multicellular forms mental causation can productively be analyzed in the framework of inherency and interaction, i.e., epigenesis. (290-291)

Nozick, Robert. Invariances. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. The late Harvard philosopher considers the increasing tendency in cosmological theories to accord the universe with organic and Darwinian features. But most of the work is taken up with clearing the ground that there is in fact an objective reality to philosophize about.

Within the evolutionary cosmology, the invariance of scientific laws under transformations might contribute to their heritability. (168)

O’Shea, Erin and Peter Wolynes, co-chairs. Research at the Intersection of the Physical and Life Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2010. A National Research Council manifesto for a synthesis of these disparate realms, mostly by way of applying nonlinear complex system theory. A stellar committee of 15 men and 8 women, e.g. Bonnie Bassler, Eugene Stanley, George Whitesides, Shirley Jackson, Astrid Prinz, and Thomas Cech, propose “common themes” such as Interaction and Information, Dynamics and Stochasticity, Self-Organization and Self-Assembly, to help bridge these domains, as they draw ever closer.

Another area finding fertile ground and producing fruitful cross-research opportunities centers on the dynamics of systems. Equilibrium, multistability, and stochastic behavior—concepts familiar to physicists and chemists—are now being used to tackle issues involved in living systems such as adaptation, feedback, and emergent behavior. Ideas of pattern formation that are at the heart of condensed matter physics now help us to understand biological self-assembly and the development of biological systems. (3)

Life itself is the ultimate paradigm of self-organization. What does it take to transition from inanimate to animated, living matter? The answer to this question involves issues of complexity in interacting systems, energy and information fluxes, memory, and other ingredients of self-organizing and self-replicating systems. (43)

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