Genes and Dialectics

Considering the currently-dominant reductionist methodology in the study of Genetics, it is crystal-clear that the same sort of drawbacks that are limiting current Sub Atomic Physics, will also restrict Genetics in similar ways.

Let us see what those ways are!

The first stance to emphasise, must involve an essential switch from Plurality to Holism, as it is clear that functional areas in a Genome are NOT merely, and or even solely, some fixed-blueprint for the construction-of, and the processes-for, that Living Organism, in the usual sense at all. For, if, I have it right, individual genes can not only influence functional processes elsewhere in the body of the organism, but also provide THE mechanism for the future Development of the whole collection of that species of organism, over successive generations. For it is THERE that the initiating changes take place!

And, the question, of course, must be "How?"

Now, to prepare to attempt to answer that question, I can only start by re-stating the alternative general Holist view of interactions. For, they naturally involve multiple, simultaneous and active factors, which, in most circumstances, do something akin to a Vector Sum, wherein individual directions are involved, as well as their more obvious contributing weights. In other words, you can get both support and/or contention from the various contributions to deliver an overall result - and that will not always be the same! Indeed, it will differ at various significant stages in a particular development.

Now, depending upon circumstances, some of these could selectively-cancel, leaving a dominant "summed" result - looking very similar to one of its components, or, surprisingly, something like that of its opposite.

Relevant studies by this author can be found on the pre-Life stages in Truly Natural Selection. These have just been re-published in the latest issue of SHAPE (63).

Issue 63 of SHAPE on Natural Selection
http://e-journal.org.uk/shape/papers/i63home.html

Both of these are cases of a Stability - maintained results, where small changes in one factor, are compensated for, by the very-same-causes, eliciting balancing (returning) changes in another opposing factor.

Now, the above ideas emerged when considering relatively simple dynamical situations, but can, and indeed must, be extended to processes and even to complex Systems.

This rich, living world is no Lego-build, as is assumed by Plurality! Looking at the building blocks alone will undoubtedly prove insufficient.

For example, if we start by considering chemical reactions (processes), the factors involved are, always, both more numerous and of qualitatively different kinds. Both resources and products are related in a given chemical processes. And, the product of one, can be a required resource for another. So, extended-linear-sequences, could be linked by products-as-resources into chains of processes. And even Cycles become possible where the End-Product of a linear sequence, becomes the necessary Resource of the first process in that same series.

So, apart from the simpler stabilities, these relatively self-resourcing cycles produce a very different kind of Stability indeed, which also can deliver a whole variety of secondary products, which have proved to be absolutely crucial in Living Things. Considering these more complex aggregations, there will regularly be both secondary required resources and consequent extra products, involving many of the successive links in such structures: and, consequently, intricate networks will result - all-of-which will be susceptible to changes in resource supplies, both overall and internally within the structures.

The problems of the usually applied pluralist approach are immediately evident. For, in ALL pluralist experimental set-ups, they are expressly designed to remove "all-but-one" of the involved factors, and then to promote the single remaining and isolated relation into an eternal Natural Law- always deemed to be totally independent of any of its contexts.

And, remember, these revelations were made when considering supposed "bottommost rungs" occurring in real world developments.

But, even these criticisms are nowhere near enough!

Mankind soon concentrated historically upon things that didn't seem to change qualitatively at all, as revealing the truly essential factors - it being their dominance that maintained things so well. We actually chose precisely those things, which effectively hid the crucial mechanisms of change, and consequently of Development too!

But, isn't the most important purpose of genes to deliver such developmental changes - so that, somehow, when a particular mutation of a gene becomes established, it, along with others, produces the advantageous change in the resulting organism that contributes to the dominance of that change by Natural Selection.

And, of course, the functions of the Genome will be far more complicated that the analogies called upon so far! For example, how does the Genome deliver its "instructions" - not only to the relevant tissues, but also internally, within the Genome itself? And, of course, exactly when do these processes take place?

Is it before conception in the gamete producing areas?

Is it after conception, but before the development of the new foetus?

Do many achieved unions get rejected very early on: do they get ejected regularly?

And, surely, many functions will only be activated later either during the pre-birth developments, or at particular times, post-birth, in the maturation, and even in the eventual decline, of the organism.

Now, the communication problem is solved in a remarkable way, for every single cell of the organism, contains a complete copy of the whole Genome, as well as a secondary set, held within its Mitochondria, so many necessary communications are present locally within the necessary cell.

But, at far more dispersed situations, actual communications had neither direct routes to follow, or even unique "addresses" to guide the message to the right place, so the "messages" were produced in abundance, and broadcast literally everywhere, via the bloodstream, which because they were sent everywhere, would indeed finally get to its intended target, where it would be recognised by finding its own mirror-image-shape to connect perfectly with, triggering its necessary function.

But, such mechanisms generated problems, when dispersed elements had, not only to be both located and activated, but also despatched to the right place, along with others similarly located and despatched, to arrive at the right time and place to deliver the necessary functions.

I have to say that much of what I see about this the on the web fails to address these problems, and instead expects to find all the answers with its ever growing database of Genomes, but with no detailed description of the mechanisms involved.

This brief paper can do no more, at this stage, than indicate what is missing from this Science, which clearly will require a veritable revolution in the necessary underlying philosophy, before the really crucial questions can be adequately addressed.

The dialectical door was found by Hegel, and we were led through it to materialism by Marx, but the crucial domain of Science has not been comprehensively addressed from this stance, and until it has, such wrong turnings, as are evident in areas like Genetics, will not be overcome.

DNA and the Social Development of the Brain?

In a CARTA video available on YouTube, by Leah Krubitzer, she delivers a remarkable alternative to the usual Genome-dominated idea of development in the brain. It clearly demonstrated that though the forms-of-development within the brain are solely determined by genetics, the actual contents of those developments are NOT so determined at all, but are primarily influenced by actual use, via behaviours in the real world - especially by behaviours caused by major crises inflicted upon the recipient.

This "seems" to return to the oldest problem of all in explaining development!

Is it wholly blue-printed within the DNA (Genome) of the living entity, which effectively determines everything that subsequently occurs, though occasionally changed by what are wholly accidental Random Damages to individual Genes, OR, can things learned during life be passed on to descendants as "Acquired Characteristics" (such as in current epigenetics and a return to Lamarckism)?

For, her contribution could also be seen in that way, but that certainly isn't, and indeed wasn't her case either. What Leah Kubitzer reveals is more a development of the former than a return to the latter as will I hope be revealed!

Indeed, various studies both of unusually sensually-equipped animals both occurring naturally, as well as in addition others having had their sensorial means artificially totally-restricted, and the effects on their brains compared over many individuals.

The results were remarkable!

Actual use, over time, had physically-changed the brains involved.

Particular areas of the brain appeared transformed in the animals artificially reduced in sensorial abilities, to enhance some of those that remained, to end up with a brain-structure similar to that of the duck-billed Platypus, whose brain-area dedicated to its super-sensory bill was relatively enormously enlarged. But, the changes noticed, in both, amounted to a great multiplicity of the connections from that part of the brain to other areas within it, and consequent increases in those particular areas too, the behaviours-possible were down to those vastly increased connections, and NOT to wholly new functional areas.

The brain was physically changed by enhanced behaviours, but then, via new connections, also enabling, in addition, wholly-new further development of such behaviours.

But, there is a great deal more in these findings than what immediately presents itself.

Notice that the duck-billed Platypus, as a species, hasn't changed much in vast periods of time, and yet the particular individual animal (a possum) deprived of its sight changed at a remarkable rate, and made all the necessary developments very early in its life - the initial period was absolutely crucial.

Nothing new was available to that animal, indeed it was a deprivation that precipitated the developments.

But, we already have a process in which the given Genome of an animal delivers all its "built-in" behaviours, with any changes being down to random chance mutations of genes. And, in addition, it is supposed to be only by such purely random damage to the genome that any changes can ever happen, and thereafter by Natural Selection, which chooses the best adaptations to predominate over succeeding generations.

Is not that single one-way causality also somewhat challenged by these findings?

For, the deprived individual animals developed not only new connections in their brains, but also enhanced, or even new, behaviours benefiting from those changes.

Yet, the developments in the brain must also be inherited! How else do modern animals including ourselves come to be as they are? And, at the same time, why do some organisms remain unchanged for millions of years?

Mankind has, in the past, clearly revealed important processes in this area, but, as usual, always conceptually simplified them in order to more easily develop them further - for simplifying Abstractions always enable such things (see all of Mathematics!).

And, there has to be more to the mostly wholly redundant and unused majority of any organism's Genome, where the genes seem to be in "rooms used as depositories of rubbish, and like those in many a Stately Home, full of no longer used cast offs".

I don't believe in 'junk' DNA! It is more likely that this represents The Past of that organism in some way, in its evolutionary development: occasionally transformed by mutations, but later bypassed either temporarily or permanently, as a repository of things that once worked but now bypassed. Could this be how prior evolutionary solutions return, in supposedly convergent evolution, such as the return of fish-like traits in sea mammals? 

Primarily, though, the dead weight of our pluralist history in Mathematics, Reasoning and even Science has imposed upon our thinking the myth of eternal Natural Laws and Reductionism, which fatally damages our ability to make sense of such Development at all, by falsely converting it into the mere Complexity of many summed-fixed-things and laws.

The consequent missing ingredient was therefore Real Qualitative Change, and hence the absolutely necessary means to ever understanding Creative Changes.

Darwin, Engels and Marx

Now, since Hegel and then Marx, the methodology of Dialectical Materialism had been devised to address such developments, culminating only in 2010 with the Theory of Emergences (by the writer of this paper), which finally tackled the trajectory of alternating Stabilities and Emergences that characterise Qualitative Development in literally all spheres.

And, echoes of it are clearly shown in the case of the deprivation of sight in a possum leading to a rush of developments in other senses - for in the Theory of Emergences the termination of seemingly permanent Stabilities can only be precipitated by crises that cannot be resolved from within them, and therefore necessarily results in both a collapse of the current Stability, and thereafter the consequent construction of a wholly new one, which is finally established via another and wholly different Stability and set of new capabilities!

Genetic Code Development in Hominids

The Ed Green lecture is in the second half of the video above, if you want to see it.

In this excellent recent lecture upon early pre-humans and Neanderthals, Richard “Ed” Green delivered a fascinating description of what is now possible from “decoding” the found Genomes of now extinct near- humans, and comparing them with both living and long deceased Humans.

I cannot do justice to his remarkable revelations amd conclusions, but they are all available on YouTube, and should be obtained directly, and in full, from the producing source. And, though Green does not make the same conclusions as myself, there is little doubt that what he derives from the now available evidence, takes him a long way from the prevailing Pluralist philosophical stance, and much closer to the alternative Holist stance.

For, I can draw, and indeed have-drawn, conclusions which, I believe, are extractable from Green and his many colleagues’ work, when early humans are compared with other animals, in terms of their then unavoidable “Means-of-Life! Green arrives at remarkable results for the natures of the Genome in all the early Humans and near humans investigated. They are considerably different from what happens in herd animals and also sedentary groups of animals, for they seem to bear the genetic stamp of being isolated Hunter/Gatherers, which, necessarily, imposed upon them a lifestyle of constantly- wandering small family groups, and even spread them, even at that early stage over extensive areas of the Planet.

And, such a lifestyle meant that to reproduce they would have to come across other, maybe very different family groups, from which partners were found and new mixes produced to then continue the incessant wandering.

The evidence available to Green, indicates the “localisation” of genetically different groups - not only Neanderthals, but others in both different parts of Asia and in Southern Africa, and interbreeding causing present day Genomes of particular humans to include a mosaic of features from “ostensibly-different” hominids - yet, still producing viable humans as a result!

Clearly, in spite of long periods of time, and extensive spatial separations, these populations are more like country or regional differences of today, for they all remained humans, according to all agreed definitions, and they would certainly have continued to have the same conditions and consequent lifestyles too.

Finally, if a holist stance is taken as the basis for all analyses in such developments, the emergence of the wholly new - the change to a new species, would have to involve a major crisis, which dissociated the prior Stability, and from its dissolution a new stability - a new species could result.

For, with such a stance Evolution CANNOT be incrementally achieved: the changes that occur without such an Emergence are NOT qualitative, but merely quantitative, the species has new varieties within it, but its essential nature is unchanged.

In other words, the lifestyle tended to isolate families over extensive areas. But the necessity of Reproduction also required access to others, probably forming still- separated, but communicating overall groups, which later came across one another (probably in the form of individual wandering families).

So, though such “local groups” might become extinct, something of their Genome would be preserved within surviving individuals long separated from that group by joining a still wandering group and contributing, genetically, to some its offspring.

This short paper appears in the new issue of SHAPE Journal on Evolution

Issue 60: Evolution

Issue 60

Here we return, at long last, to the theme of Evolution. How might our recent insights into the notion of Holist Science affect our study of biological change?

This is certainly not a full-and-final definition of an Alternative Approach to the Study and Explanation of Evolution. But, it is something of a well-informed muse upon how that might be addressed - contributed by a philosopher who has specialised in just such an approach in Sub Atomic Physics, primarily in opposing, and finally disproving the current consensus stance of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

It resolutely rejects the universally-supported Pluralist Stance, which underpins not only Mathematics and the Sciences, but crucially Formal Logic too. And, the reason for its failures is that it focuses exclusively upon Stability, not only as the underlying basis, but as the only means to expose and allow the extraction of Reality’s supposed “Eternal Natural Laws”.

It thus necessarily excludes all Qualitative Change in all its analyses, and uses only Quantitative Change - thus substituting Amount for Quality, and Complexity for Emergence!

It has, of course, proved to be invaluable in dealing with situations within such Stability, but useless in coping with Qualitative Development such as Evolution.

It is also significant that the Holist alternative to Plurality was, and is still, a widespread philosophical standpoint, particularly in Asia, and among Buddhists, for it was first extensively described and used by the Buddha in his many Suttas. But the modern version arose out of Hegel’s criticisms of Formal Logic, and was developed as a system by Karl Marx in his Dialectical Materialism.

This short collection of papers is an initial argument for the holist stance to be applied to Evolution, as it was originally defined by Marx in his analyses of the development of Human Social Systems, and their transformations in Social Revolutions. And, also as demonstrated by this writer via the application of his Theory of Emergences, in his works on Philosophy, Mathematics, Science and Formal Logic

The Head-Up, Non-Specialist, Theoretical approach?

The Necessary Role of Philosophy in Science

On reading a collection of short articles under the general title of The Unknown Genome in New Scientist (2765), I realised that I had perhaps hit pay-dirt with regard to my own ideas on the possible policing of genetic materials within all organisms.

I found, in this series, substantial evidential support for some of the hypotheses I have been formulating about this area, particularly in the maintenance and policing of the genetic material (though, of course, my considerations were, perhaps surprisingly, almost wholly philosophical).

NOTE: A fuller discussion of the content of the above mentioned series in New Scientist will be addressed in a separate paper on completion of this one.

I am no professional biologist, and I must depend wholly on those who are, for the content that I must attempt to make sense of. So, I hadn’t arrived at my suggestions via personally-newly discovered concrete evidence, but, on the contrary, solely in response to my dissatisfaction with the usual consensus explanations of Mutation and Species Change, and involving possible alternative accounts of my own.

The usual explanations were much too hit and miss, and as is usually the case, often latched onto the ubiquitous use of Randomness to “explain” everything!

No, I was convinced that Life would immediately and vigorously react to mutation damage to its absolutely vital genetic materials, and hence, apart from Natural Selection of the adult phenotype, other processes would occur within the genotype to remove, alleviate, or “wrap-up” and store any genetic damage, which, by some set of criteria was labelled as wholly deleterious.

I must admit that while I am not a biologist, I have always been very interested in all aspects of the subject, and have followed developments closely. I have never been taught the subject at any level, and my experimental experience was, and still is, is precisely NIL.

But I am by no means un-informed. I have been reading extensively on this subject for over 40 years, not to mention on many other very wide-ranging areas, and was indeed extensively educated as a scientist and mathematician, prior to changing my specialisms several times, and even achieving a professorial appointment in one of these latter areas.

So, what is it that I must have been doing to now attempt to integrate such state of the art discoveries into my own propositions?

The resonance between what these real biologists were finding and my suggestions as to what I considered were necessary processes have been surprisingly close. The usual response to such a person as myself making any worthwhile contribution at all on such a specialist subject is universally agreed to be of minimal value.

But such a reaction is not always justified.

And this same situation has occurred several times for me in widely different disciplines. It has even occurred within my legitimate disciplines of Physics and Mathematics, because I was “making judgements well outside my specialist areas”. More expected similar responses have been coming my way in many other areas from Painting and Sculpture to even Dance at one extreme to Geology, Politics and Pedagogy on another. Yet, though such condemnations would usually be correct, they will not always be so. It will depend on how such a wide range of subjects are considered by the outside interloper.

It will most certainly depend on his ground! In other words it will be basically determined by how that person deals with knowledge and understanding from disparate areas: it will depend on his worldview.

Specialisation does indeed allow a remarkable focus to be achieved and discoveries to be made. It is, of course, essential for each and every serious area of study. But it is also invariably what I term a Head-Down approach. It limits the considerations of the expert to his/her own narrow area. And it must be contrasted with a Head-Up approach, which builds its worldview out of the widest possible Knowledge and Understanding.

It should really be the approach of the philosopher, but even there it is rarely the normal mode.

All problems, no matter what the specialism, will not be solved by concentrating only within that specialism. Indeed, along with the accumulated wisdom of that specialism, such a limitation will also justify and firmly embed in addition its current assumptions and errors. Many practitioners will never see the wood for the trees. And a generalist approach can, and sometimes does, reveal things invisible to the Head-Down expert.

A real philosopher MUST be multi-discipline, if he/she is to benefit from human gains across the board in understanding the World. All understanding is, of course, social, but it is also multi-discipline. Even the greatest specialist experts show almost unbelievable errors in their generalist thinking.

It is almost universally true that all specialists make rubbish philosophers. And they also cannot switch disciplines and produce as good work thereafter as they did in their own prior area.

To give an exemplar of this which may establish my own approach, I will relate the experience of my major diversion into Dance!

I have become the leading author of Multimedia Resources for the Teaching of Dance (along with an excellent Dance specialist colleague). And this situation was established some 21 years ago, and has remained the case ever since. In addition I also designed a teaching aid for Dance Teachers employing Rudolf Laban’s ideas in their area, and related to his famous Labanotation – the world-wide employed method for recording Dance. 

In that very different world, I became an expert in Computer Systems and Programming, not only producing that high point of systems design – a machine independent compiler, but finally achieved a post as Director of Information Technology in one of the colleges of the University of London. I had received zero instruction in computing also.

But, I was always a Head-Up philosopher, and every discipline was relevant to that! Recently I have been making significant contributions in the Theory of Emergences, as applied to the Origin of Life on Earth and to its subsequent Evolution.

Have I any right to tackle such problems? Many would tender an emphatic, “No!”, but they would also be mistaken.

In the last five years I have again changed course and spent all my time writing about Philosophy and now run an online Journal (SHAPE) concerned with Philosophy and it is full of new and legitimate ideas.

Now, at this point, the reader may well be yawning at “my efforts to show how clever I am”, but they would be mistaken if they are. I am, and purport to be no genius.

I got a lower second in Physics from Leeds University, and was throughout my education damned with the faint praise of “promising”. No, my descriptions of what I do are not to establish any sort of superiority, but, on the contrary, to reveal an approach that enables me to address such a very wide area of disciplines and to do something worthwhile in every one. It is because I am, and always have been, multi-discipline in my interests. NO! “Interests” is much too weak a word. I should have said “concerns”.

And though much of conventional education is to tell us HOW things happen, I always wanted to know WHY they happened the way that they did. 

AND I demanded (of myself) a philosophy that could face all ways, and cope with all expectations. After all, what is the use of a philosophy that is strictly limited to a specific discipline – as, for example, the current consensus in Sub-Atomic Physics – the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory and its various developments.

Not only should my philosophy be entirely general, but it should never be only an academic subject. 

As Robert Pirsig tried to insist in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Philosophy is for every day! It should illuminate your life and purposes, and it should never be second hand!

Though you may, and indeed frequently have to, take on what you learn from others, you must never be converted “hook, line and sinker” for most of what you “take on” as your position, you will not fully understand if you do.

But, if, on the other hand, what you learn from others must be integrate-able with what you already understand, it will be very different. It may be difficult to achieve such integration, but without it, you really have nothing new to take on.

What you have learnt cannot actually mean anything!

Of course, if your “core” is constant and immutable, you will also be in deep trouble! Integration is a two-way process, and its successful achievement changes the receiving “core”, and frequently the new material too. Indeed, the greatest understanding comes only from transcending what appears to be unbridgeable contradictions between what you already understand and what you are trying to integrate.

The reason for such an impasse is always that your usually-inviolate assumptions are incorrect, and the only way to traverse the seeming full-stop is by a radical change in those assumptions.

I have recently been fascinated by Evolution and have even written a paper entitled Truly Natural Selection, which generalised Darwin and Wallace’s Natural Selection to apply also to non-living, purely-chemical processes by means of a very different selection process.

My Theory of Emergences tackles the trajectory of Emergence Events such as the Origin of Life on Earth, NOT particularly, of course, but generally as a revolutionary interlude in the on-going Evolution of Reality. It concerns itself with the form or shape of the episode – its turnovers and consequent phases until there is some sort of resolution in the establishment of a wholly New Level.

What has therefore emerged is extremely surprising!

The assumption that minor constructive processes prior to such an Event actually precipitate a whole new Level determined by the direction of those prior processes is shown to be totally INCORRECT! The nature of the new Level does NOT emanate from changes in the prior Level at all. The only thing that within-Level processes can produce is a catastrophic collapse of the prior system, and that is very different indeed from the usual assumption. 

Indeed, it is ONLY the Second Law of Thermodynamics type sub-processes that bring about the demise of every Stable Level.

The first phase in an Emergence is the opposite of anything emerging: it is composed of a catastrophic collapse of the prior stability, which then seems to be hurling headlong down to total chaos.

But it doesn’t!

The dismantling of the stability-ensuring processes within the previous Level, plus its history and still-remaining, productive-process content, allows new things to occur, which within the stable Level were prohibited, and a brief period of remarkably diverse and numerous processes leads, by a selective process to the creation of entirely-new proto-systems. Nevertheless, these quickly generate their own Second Law curtailing, and this leads into a period of oscillations between creation and dissolution, which nevertheless gradually ascends to a point where a completely new and self-maintaining Level is established and PERSISTS!

It is no empty myth, when legend talks of the Phoenix arising from the flames of destruction.

That is the ONLY way that the wholly NEW can ever emerge!

The real myth is that which asserts that innovation can be achieved by small quantitative and incremental steps - it cannot.

Now, interestingly, my work on Emergences naturally progressed to seeing what their role must be in the actual Evolution of Life, and many questions immediately arose about our universally agreed assumptions of how new species emerged, and also how matter ascended from inert particles to produce Life, Humankind and indeed Consciousness. The incrementalist myth would just NOT suffice, for such a remarkable trajectory, and all our basic assumptions had to be thoroughly investigated.

My work in this area (remember I am NOT a biologist) has recently been confirmed by a whole series of unconnected discoveries by real experimental research biologists in the various academic Journals and Magazines.

The point of this paper is NOT self-congratulation, but instead to try to reveal why an ordinary man from a poor working-class background (my grandmother could neither read nor write) could be in a position to make such significant contributions.

It HAS to be important, and though it may dismay the elitists and the privileged, it should encourage all who really want to understand the World, rather than merely join-the-club, accept the consensus, and live comfortably.

But, the barriers to doing it are indeed considerable, I must admit! Such researches are MORE than a full time job and you have to earn your living.

I chose, and luckily it was the correct choice, to be a teacher, and have taught at every level of Education from lower schools to Universities. But to get anywhere I had to move fairly frequently. I had eight posts culminating in my Directorship at Goldsmiths’ College, and always tackling new things. 

At Goldsmiths’ I devised and commissioned the first Campus-wide Fibre-Optic Network in any of the Colleges of London University, while in Glasgow I had to turn myself into a systems expert to set up an appropriate teaching-orientated computer network and system for an educational institution at the highest level, and also to become an expert in Computers-in-Control to help many researchers with their chosen questions.

The thing is to tackle what needs doing, and learn as you go. Nevertheless, you do not have to have a goal from the start. It expands with each new job and the challenges they deliver. I seemed to arrive at a professorial level final post by a totally unplanned route. (Though I often spent very long periods in a given post, because the job demanded it).

But, what does happen is that as your achievements are your own, and never facilitated by contacts and influence, you gain in both reputation and confidence.

From an initially shy working class boy from West Gorton, Manchester, I am now a confident philosopher! How about YOU?

New Special Issue: Back Ways Up

Read it here

Understanding Reality does not merely involve the ascending of a simple staircase of key discoveries. It is clear that there are innumerable floors (or levels) in this “Mansion of Truth". Nevertheless, it is always very difficult to find the way up to the next floor, for no staircases are immediately evident, and to ever find the presumed Grand Processional Stairway just isn’t possible – for it doesn’t really exist!

Of course, it is easy to convince yourself that everything you need to know and understand will be available on the current landing (Level), especially as the number of available doors (study areas) seems infinite, and, crucially, if one door turns out to be useless, you can always switch to the door opposite (the alternative arm of the Dichotomy?), and try that!

Mankind’s basic, and still universal, Pragmatism ensures the maximum possible is extracted from each level, but cannot go any further in a coherent and comprehensive way, without transcending that current level’s impasses.

However, new "hidden staircases" are becoming apparent with real potential for revealing a breakthrough.

One is the investigation into the inexplicable Quantum Entanglement, while another is certainly possible with Nuclear Decay. Finally, a third possibility could well be in the genetic role in Evolution – particularly involving the so-called Junk DNA. And, there are many more such quandaries that are beginning to reveal possible ways up!

The following papers, mostly from December 2015, are perhaps the most fruitful concerning the required General Holistic Approach.

The Spark of Life

 

 
With what small, flickering sliver did Life begin?

It was certainly not yet a cell, or even something well below that form, but endowed with RNA or even DNA. To place such things as these as the necessary starting point reveals from where we are currently standing, and looking, imbued with that position, to identify the first traces of Life. And from such a standpoint, we will not be addressing the actual Spark of Creation, but really yet another stage in the following Evolution.

We realise what Evolution is, and merely extrapolate backwards until that process “seamlessly transforms” into a very similar process in the preceding non-living substances.

We impose an incrementalist conception upon an Event that could never be such.

The Origin of Life on Earth was the most significant transforming Event in the history of the Universe (as far as we know), and such an approach laced through with the usual banker assumptions of more commonplace changes will never reveal what actually happened.

Not only was that event far earlier than such “life indicators” that we insist must be present, but even the significant steps in the following Evolution were always majorly redirected by very similar Events, which we term Emergences.

So, in concertinaing and truncating the earliest wonderful living miracle, we effectively emasculate the real, creative processes involved, and disable our chances of revealing what would be the most important understanding possible for Mankind.

Why is it that all those involved in the quest to reveal Life’s actual Origin, insist upon their mechanisms and processes, though admittedly writ very long and very large?

It is because that trajectory from non-living chemical processes to the very First Life actually involved the most unpredictable series of 'miracles', which changed the whole game, and the whole context too. For in finding any means of making sense out of Reality in general, we first had to make it intelligible. And to, therefore, start with such miracles was not a good idea at all. No one addressed the miracles! The dominant method, which has been developed to date, is the “pluralist analytic, scientific method", wherein various Wholes are identified, and “held still” in order to discern their hidden components (Parts). And if ever that proved inadequate, a complete locality would be isolated, and nailed down with many less-significant factors totally removed, while others would be increasingly held constant, until our hoped for and maybe only previously glimpsed “key relation” was revealed clearly and continually. Only then could it be measured and the results formulated into some sort of Formal Relation or Equation.

Such a methodology did, and still does, put into our hands the wherewithall to replicate those vital conditions, and USE the relations to some required end. But, it is crucially flawed, because it cannot deal with unfettered Reality, but only with a maximally modified and indeed “farmed” version of it, which we can set up and exploit!

It cannot deal with Life!

And that certainly not only includes its Origin, but in each and every significant, qualitative change in its subsequent development. For that particular standard process of investigation would kill it – stone dead!

Its applicability to the “Forms” evident from Living Things, and the chemistry and the physics occurring within Living Things is indeed possible, but never to Life itself.

For Plurality – the conceptual basis for that method divides things into their contributing Parts, as if they are entirely separable and caused by purely bottom-up factors in a strictly physical or chemical way.

Life was never that, so it became impossible to investigate the Origin of Life by such means.

Instead, we do small within-a-level causal sequences such as Oparin’s studies of Sols and Gels, and hope that sufficient other areas can be cracked to “come together” like a jigsaw puzzle - to reveal Life.

That is a forlorn hope, for Life is not such a collection of investigatable “Parts”: it is an integrated Whole, and the means to deliver the trajectory of its First Appearance is certainly not yet in our scientists’ hands. Nor, will it ever be while they restrict themselves to pluralist means. First Life was not created by cumulative, incremental processes at a pre-Life level, which at some point “passed” a vital threshold and – “Lo, behold Life!”

The transition to Life was a revolutionary trajectory, with diverse and contrasting Phases, which we term an Emergence. Those who, like Oparin, deliver necessary precursors such as appropriate chemical forms, or organic syntheses, say absolutely nothing about the transforming Event itself. The truth is the very opposite of their assumed cumulative aggregations, for the evidence is that such Emergences are always triggered off by a cataclysmic dismantling of the preceding stability, as the ONLY way that the totally new could possibly emerge, and thereafter an unavoidable battle between alternatives, and a integrating of defensive and constraining sub processes, which would finally establish a wholly new Level of Stability could be achieved, which we term Life!

Indeed, a crucially universal law is negated within such an Event.

It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which perpetually pertains within Stability, but is replaced by its opposite during the creative heart of these transforming Events. And this can only be achieved when in the dismantling of a current stability, all its “policemen processes” are dissociated, so that a uniquely totally unfettered situation allows previously prohibited constructional processes to proceed and grow.

Notice also, that these Events do not all succeed. There is no inevitability about them. Many will not make it to a new Level of Stability and will fall back to something akin to the prior state. But even these failures will contribute to a following ascent. Every failure will leave behind scraps or detritus, which could be participants in the next revolution when it occurs. And, these Emergences have been happening throughout the whole history of the Universe, and every single stable success, has, in the end, come to its demise. No Stability is eternal!

How could our current pluralist, pedestrian and incrementalist conceptions ever crack this unique kind of problem? They have never been able to do it, and their methodology prohibits them ever doing it now or in the future.

Interesting article on viruses in the human genome

Wonders never cease, a decent article in New Scientist!