Issue 38 of Shape: Ideas on the Origin of Life

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This latest edition started as a reaction to an article in New Scientist (3008) on Eukaryotic and Prokaryotic cells in the development of life, but soon drew in the prior work by this theorist on the Origin of Life itself.

It was worth stressing that either working downwards from living entities, or working upwards from non-living entities, would both fail to explain this crucial event, which rather than being a mere incremental development in the evolution of matter, was certainly a kind of revolution, and must have occurred in what we now term an Emergent Event. Thus this collection of papers became a kind of review of the ideas vital to a solution to the most important problem in Science: why does life exist at all?

New Special Issue: Analogistic Models II

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Clearly, the establishment of a comprehensive basis for a whole new standpoint and methodology in Science, was not, and could not be, achieved in the few papers of Analogistic Models I. Indeed, such a demanding and consistent basis will take a great deal of effort, and a considerable amount of time.

However, certain breakthroughs have already been achieved by a number of researchers, some of whom did not fully realise the true import of their contributions. And, indeed, the supertanker that is today’s consensus of Pluralistic Science, will still take an enormous effort to re-direct into an entirely different Holistic direction, especially as the much admired gains of isolation, simplification and idealisation of the Pluralist approach, will be sorely missed in this new and much more difficult realm in which, “Everything affects everything else!”

Some measure of the difficulties involved has been demonstrated by the problems encountered by the two pioneers of this approach, namely Charles Darwin and Stanley Miller. For, in Darwin’s case, the evident strong opposition to what he was doing caused him to continue studies and delay publication of his Origin of Species for decades. While, Miller’s brilliant experiment revealing the natural creation of amino acids in his constructed emulation of the processes taking place in the primitive atmosphere and seas of the early Earth, had to be abandoned as no viable Holistic methodology was available to take things further.

To finally address Reality, in its true complexity, recursivity and evolution, involved a substantial step into much more difficult territory, and, crucially, a return of the currently universally dominant quantitative relations, to their correct and subordinate position in Theory, and the re-instatement of Explanatory Models (based upon analogy) as the primary theoretical achievements of Science.

So clearly, the task cannot possibly involve a quick fix, indeed, based on the discoveries of the philosopher Frederick Hegel, the development of theory is NOT an amassing of many eternal Natural Laws, but the continuing development of a whole infinite series of models, validated by their increased Objective Content. This second in the series on Analogistic Models attempts to clarify this objective.

Naming Things

What is it?

Let us consider an entity involved in some sort of process of change!

It could be either changing in its position (moving), or it could be changing its actual nature (transforming) into something else.

Now, we have to ask, “Is the former a meaningfully possible conception?”, for, it will surely depend upon what it is moving with respect to, whether something other than itself, or even some substrate through which it is moving? And, in addition, we have to deal with the apparent fact that absolutely everything is always moving, so to isolate an apparent stationary state, or any particular relative movement cannot be the full revelation of its movement anyway.

And, of course, any variation in distance from something else will vary the effect that our object will have upon it and vice versa, so even separating out movement is leaving aside such changing interrelationships.

So clearly, apart from totally internally caused changes within our entity, all others will be indissolubly linked with relative positions to other affecting things.

Yet, it is clear, all our conceptions of a thing always actually extract it from its real, full context, and, by doing so, remove it from what makes it what it is. Hence, by defining it in that way, we are turning it into an eternal something, identified only by its then appearance and what we decide to call it!
Can we do that without distorting it in a fundamental way?

Of course, not! When something is removed entirely from its real context, what is there left to determine it? Most certainly, there are its inter-relationships, and hence also its properties too. So, in even conceiving of such a totally isolated state, we can only talk about its appearance, if subject to absolutely no effects outside of itself.

Now, such an approach would appear to be impossible, or at best “ideal”.

The conception of something, independent of all external affecting factors, can only deliver an idealisation of the thing! For, in ignoring those causations, we are making it eternal, or, as-it-is-now, for we will never be in a position to predict all future forms. And, this will also be of NO value when it comes to it having any relations with anything else.

So, let us suppose, therefore that as a first approximation, we can isolate it in this way. If we could, what exactly would we have? Surely, only its appearance to us by whatever means we have to observe it? And, what will have given it that appearance?

There will be only those things still within it (and, of course, its now unavailable history). If considering it without any recourse to these will only allow a Naming and Describing, in order to recognise it when we see it again, and nothing more. We certainly don’t by any means understand it!

NOTE: This sounds very much like the patterns we discern in its appearance by our means of observing it, and nothing more! And it is these forms and patterns, that we measure and relate in scientific experiments, where we assume that we have removed all external distorting influences, and are getting only what we can from it alone.

The easiest of such measureables is surely Position.

And we measure this “ideally” with reference to some totally inert, non-affecting reference frame (which by definition cannot change it in any way at all). This was Newton’s method!

Now, the relation of a series of positions with respect to different times (another absolute reference system) gives us a relation, and it is possible that an Equation might be found to fit those data. But, in such, could there be any explanation of why it moved in that way? Of course not: it could be any number of things that caused it to follow that path. The equation can only be a description of the result of it being moved – an answer to “How?”, but certainly not to “Why?” And when we do so, and infer that there is a cause of the movement completely defined by the equation alone, it has to be total nonsense! Forms, which occur in innumerable contexts, cannot possibly ever deliver explanations, only the differently caused recurrences of universal formal patterns.

Now, we know that things appear to be totally unchanging for long periods, and therefore can as a first approximation, assume that they are constant. We also know that interludes of significant qualitative change are bound to occur – Emergences, when the thing will become, at first a whole series of intermediaries, until a new stability is finally established, when our thing will have become something else, which will then seem to be entirely constant once more!

So, though we might get away with, during periods of stability, a conception of any one thing being constant (or even eternal), it will not be the truth!

For, to get to the inevitable transforming period, things must have been getting slowly to a position where the constancy of many things is being undermined, so that the nature of the given entity, along with many others, will be rapidly coming into question.

Surely, the nearest thing to getting an accurate generally applicable conception of the thing must be when it is visibly changing, for only then are the things that are changing it revealed.

Yet, we insist in treating it in the very opposite way, and characterising it when it is temporarily constant. In doing this we are ignoring all the significantly contributing factors that are involved, and which will, at some point, change it into something else!

Indeed, we could use that characterisation generally, but have the details swamped by one or another dominance, that for a time will hide the many still present processes that continue to be present, and give once more the illusion of permanence to its current appearance.

Indeed, only careful analysis, moment-by-moment, during an emergent interlude, will reveal a host of affecting factors with each and every temporary mix, resolving into one temporary dominance after another. And, such a tumultuous sequence, will, in the end, have exposed a whole series of affecting factors, which can, and do, affect our entity, but varying in dominance in the differing sequence of contexts. And this set will even be true during its time as an apparently constant thing, during each period of stability.

Now, the observant reader will have noticed a set of assumptions, by the writer, as to “things-in-general” and “over time”, and that is indeed true! No matter what we do, we will always bring to our observations such basic assumptions. But, they are not the usual ones assumed by the majority of the human population. They are the assumptions extracted from a host of experiences, which have concentrated upon qualitative changes, and not, as is usually the case, assumed constant or even eternal factors!

And, it must also be admitted, that the most important generalisation has been the realisation of unavoidable alternate periods of Stability and Significant Change (Emergences) that characterise all development. And in these periods of change – the Emergent Episodes, there always arises the absolutely New.

Now, the key template Emergence, to be used as a general model for these episodes, has to be the Origin of Life on Earth, but there are innumerable others in the history of the Cosmos, all the way from the supposed Big Bang to the Emergence of currently living entities today.

Now, it was useless characterising something entirely from its apparently eternal features during some period of stability, and instead finding what constituted it during an Emergent Event would certainly be considerably better, but we will still have been totally unable to include what has emerged as totally new, within that complex transformation.

So, several questions are bound to arise!

Can we determine such brand new features, by studying the situation before the changes occurred?

The answer to this can only be, “No!” There will always be absolutely no trace of it prior to the transformation that produced it!

Can we, alternatively, therefore, study the situation, after the change, and trace our identified new factor back to its actual moment of birth?

Sadly, the answer to this will also be, “No!” And this is because the nature of such an origin is never a simple, linear causal sequence. On the contrary, it is the result of a complex, holistic mix that hasn’t exactly as such ever have occurred before, and a whole trajectory of changes delivering a myriad of temporary phases, all happening simultaneously and affecting each other, until some sort of final emergence of a new stability, containing these new features finally come to be.

Once again, the only place to have any chance of finding and studying the trajectories, which led to these new features, will be within the Emergence itself!

Now that, I am sure you will agree, is well nigh impossible! For, in almost all of these episodes, the process has already finished, before we discern its revolutionary new contents. How could we possibly investigate such things?

Well, surprisingly, there have been such interludes that were so investigated, though they happened at the Social level of organised matter: they were, in fact, Social Revolutions – particularly that which occurred in Russia. For there, the main revolutionary faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party was a Marxist organisation, and had this standpoint as the ground and method for understanding what was happening in the midst of revolutionary changes.

Now, these are not common occurrences, and when they do, the chances of there being an organisation involved capable of addressing these crucial questions would be extremely unlikely – especially as those current parties that profess such a standpoint have, in fact, long since abandoned it.

And, of course, such experiences are only very indirectly applicable in other areas of study.

The question of what to do in all these very different areas is what we have also to address. How can we investigate such Emergent Episodes?

Well, we have to actually construct a mini Emergence, and study that! And there are scientists who have attempted to do it.

Perhaps the most significant was Stanley Miller, in the experiment he devised and constructed based upon the known contents of the primaeval Atmosphere of the early Earth.

For, he was successful in his attempt, and at the end of only one week, he was able to show that amino acids had been produced, some of the most important building bricks of Life. Now admittedly, he couldn’t take his experiment further, nor could he reveal a single process that had occurred within his system. He could not penetrate his apparatus without destroying its natural systems. But, we can do this now!

This author has already re-designed a new version of Miller’s Experiment, but with defined physical paths for the movements of the substances involved to follow, and with time-based analytic tools positioned throughout. With such a set up, it would be possible to begin to disentangle the various active processes taking place and their sequences, and to do it for several simultaneous strands too – all related to a master timing system.

And, such experiments are not the only possible forms for Holistic Science.

Yves Couder decided to move the phenomena that continue to cause chaos in Physics from their Sub Atomic level with all its inherent difficulties, into a possible analogous situation at the macro level, where analogous phenomena could be much more easily investigated. His artificially conceived-of set up was of course nothing like that at the micro level, but he reasoned that such situations must involve the interactions of various different oscillations, involving both resonances and recursions. So, he constructed a surprising set up for his investigations. He started with a basis for his required structures, which was a shallow tray of silicone oil constantly subject to a given vertical vibration. He then released a drop of the same liquid onto the surface of this vibrating substrate. Of course, it was merely absorbed in the substrate. Yet, by varying the few parameters under his control, he managed to get the drop to not only cause a wave in that substrate but also bounce upwards again. Now, the upwards moving drop slowed down under gravity, until it reached zero velocity and began to fall again, to again to once more come into contact with the substrate. But, again merely by the available adjustments he found he could ensure that it not only bounced again, but would thereafter continue to bounce by always coming into contact with the substrate wave coming up. Such a permanent, continually repeating cycle could only be achieved by getting the required energy from the forced vibration of the whole substrate, and causing recursively a forced oscillation of the drop too. A Local Zone of the surface of the substrate had become a kind of standing wave, and the system of drop and standing wave (termed a “walker”) could move about across the surface of the substrate, and several phenomena that were similar to those at the sub atomic level were made to occur.

This was a remarkable kind of experiment.

It based itself on analogies and purposive constructions in the most amenable of areas, to attempt to reveal comparable situations to other currently impenetratable phenomena at the sub atomic level. What could be extracted from Couder’s experiments were indeed remarkable.

But, clearly the efforts of Darwin, Miller and Couder are merely the very first steps in developing a new approach to Science, which no longer insists upon both stability and total control to reveal “essences of Reality”, but purposely attempts to ride the tiger, and investigate Emergent Episodes as delivering the real truths about Reality.

New Special Issue: The Evolution of Matter

This rather long and meandering paper, though originally intended merely as an argument for the existence of the Evolution of all Matter (as well as Living Things), rather rapidly had to address a wholly new, Holistic standpoint for scientific investigation and explanation, and thus was inevitably diverted into delivering at least some important contributions to that area. For the usual standpoint in Science is NOT holistic, but pluralistic, and though perfectly suitable in areas in equilibrium, is entirely unsuitable for dealing with systems in qualitative change. Now, as it very quickly became a rather extended piece, it could not be allowed to deal fully with all aspects so generated by this alternative stance. So, they have been somewhat truncated, with the suggestion, for those requiring a more comprehensive treatment, to address the much fuller accounts published in the 50 issues of SHAPE Journal on the Internet by this author.

Read it here

A Diagram from the issue:

Documentary on the Philosophy of Science

Documentary by Michael Coldwell on the work of philosopher Jim Schofield. "The Problem With Science" looks at several flawed assumptions at the heart of the scientific method, and how they have adversely effected how we see the world.

While few would deny the great technological and scientific advances of the last century, even fewer are aware of the methodology's many drawbacks and pitfalls, and how these have lead us to a distorted view of reality, and an inability to understand both qualitative change and the inexplicable emergence of the wholly new.

Is the answer to adopt a more holisitic approach to Science?

A New Special Series on Marxism

The major difficulty in defining an agenda for the essential work of Marxists today is just that the necessary range is so vast, and yet any selectively biased content will undoubtedly have the same damaging effect as has been shown to be the case in the concentrations followed in the last period.

The work must be carried forward on all fronts. But, in merely saying that, such cannot, of itself, reconstruct the ground on which current Marxism is pursued: that could indeed remain exactly the same, but applied to a wider variety of areas. There is clearly more to it than mere range.

Indeed, there can be little doubt that the standpoint of Marx and Engels has been abandoned by current Marxist, even though they continue to strongly acclaim the virtues of those giants. Frankly current Marxists have abandoned Marxism, because they are simply not up to the task.

But, if so, how can such a Series re-establish the sound philosophical standpoint of the founders of Marxism. It clearly cannot be achieved by merely quoting selectively from those masters. The current practitioners have to do what Marx and Engels did, only more so, and in a much wider and more demanding set of areas.

For, as these philosophers showed, there is absolutely NO specialist area of human investigation that cannot profoundly benefit from the supreme holistic, philosophical standpoint of Marxism.

But how on earth can we redefine that, and ensure that it is indeed used as the point from which to view Reality in every possible respect? It is clear to this author, after a lifetime of participation in many different Sciences, and a worthwhile contribution in many of them, that the touchstone area to ensure that the correct approach is followed has to be Science, before almost anything else.

Now, this general area was widely ignored after the early Marxists, and indeed, in spite of the quite evident major crisis in Sub Atomic Physics that has now lasted for around a century, no one Marxist has been able to address this impasse, and currently many of the same ilk are queuing up to actually conform to the retreat that goes under the title of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and its consequent and wholly idealist developments.

The test piece for this required rejuvenation of Marxism has to be the Defeat of Copenhagen – totally and unrecoverably!

Now it wont be easy, for this “section” of Physics has turned away from explaining Reality to exploring a much more amenable World – that of Pure Form alone, the domain of the Mathematicians, which I insist on clearly identifying as Ideality!
Yet it is hard to depart from a definition of Science as The Study and Explanation of Reality in all its aspects, and hence it is not only inseparable from Philosophy, but would seem, at its best, to stand upon identical ground to Marxism as a philosophical standpoint. And though, in small areas, a new approach to Science, which is entirely holistic rather than pluralistic has begun to appear in a number of specialisms, they are totally uncoordinated.

No comprehensive methodology for a Holist Science has been developed or even admitted to be necessary.

The total abandonment of the holist idea behind Miller’s Experiment concerned with an investigation into the Origin of Life on Earth, shows just how indissolubly wedded to Plurality is the Science of Today. All the consequences of a pluralist standpoint dominate current Science, from Analysis based upon the separability of all contributing factors in any situation, right down to a causing hierarchy to the simplest of fundamental, immutable bases – Reductionism.

Indeed, the true Nature of Reality is denounced, to be replaced by the much more easily used pluralist and domain-based construction.

Yet, as this author has demonstrated, a modern version of Miller’s Experiment is entirely possible, using techniques already available, from pluralist science, but used to contribute to an entirely holistic core experiment.

Now the overall task outlined here is clearly much too big for a single Special Issue of SHAPE Journal, or even of an ambitious book. And it is certainly too big for a single individual to tackle either effectively or comprehensively.

But, to establish this vital area will require specialists: scientists who are dissatisfied with the universally dominant pluralistic approach.

The author of this paper has been involved in Marxist politics all his adult life, but there were never enough scientists there. In spite of being a mathematician, a physicist and a biologist himself, his clear commitment to these disciplines was invariably dismissed as a deflection from the real issues. My political colleagues were mistaken! It is the responsibility of Marxists to include Science as the only other discipline possible to reveal vast tracts of Reality. To ignore Science, or even worse to merely follow its pluralist bias is unforgiveable.
A start must be made!

This new Series of Special Issues of the SHAPE Journal, will be totally dedicated to Marxism in Science.

The purpose will be to encourage many more to join in the effort and submit their own contributions.

The intention is to cover the following areas at a rate of 6 volumes of SHAPE per annum:

1. A Revised Version of Miller’s Experiment
2. The Theory of Emergences
3. An Alternative Marxist Cosmology
4. The Alternative to Copenhagen
5. A Holist Science
6. The Origin of Life on Earth
7. Not Absolute Truth, but Objective Content
8. Truly Natural Selection
9. Order and Chaos
10. What is Mathematics?
11. Form and Content
12. Stability & Revolution

These are intended to be interleaved with other Issues of the SHAPE Journal, appearing about every two months or so, and should therefore take two years for the complete cycle to be completed.

Read MARXISM I here 

New Special Issue: Stability

Read it here

Previous papers on Stability, though essential, have not adequately dealt with the full Nature of, and reasons for, Stability, and why this happens is, when you think about it, very clear. For we are talking about Systems, and these are not unidirectional as are all simple processes, but indeed include many very different, and even contending processes, which nevertheless arrive at some overall system-state, in which opposites are both transcended, yet at the same time maintained. They are neither wholly removed, nor are they cancelled out. On the contrary, they continue unabated, but only because they are contained within a higher order, overall balanced system, where they do not determine that state, but are included within it, and are part of the overall balance.

Now, such statements can seem to involve hard-to-accept contradictions, until it is realised that the new Stability is based primarily upon other things, and can maintain a balance, actively, without cancelling out its clearly directly contending components. It is not a co-operative, all-pulling-in-the-same-direction system, but an effective compromise, which manages to deliver by working at a higher level, with all things balanced for those higher-level purposes.

To help illustrate some of the rather complex issues raised by this study, Shape commissioned a short film entitled The Problem with Science, which aims to address the current myopic consensus on Stability and Emergence, and to proffer an alternative way of looking at the world around us.

Issue 25 of SHAPE

Read it here

This edition marks a change in both layout and overall method for this author, and as such requires a few explanatory words here. They are not about the content so much as how that content redefines its presentation.

The question being considered is the essential touchstone for a necessary and truly profound change in scientific method, for it cannot be addressed by the usual standpoint and methodology, which has remained essentially the same for several centuries.

Tragically, its clear inadequacies, revealed towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th within Physics, did not lead to this necessary and indeed revolutionary change, but instead precipitated the wholesale retreat, which became The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

For this change, in order to retain a “coherent” approach, rejected Explanation (Theory) as illusory, and pragmatically reverted to Prediction (and its means - Equation) as Science’s sole purpose. This retrenchment has now lasted 100 years, and shows no signs of ending.

Thus, those who consider that the Explanation of Phenomena to be Science’s ever-improvable essence, must find answers to the philosophical and methodological impasse that has resulted in this devastating retreat. And, there are many real world examples, which can be investigated to begin to get a handle upon Significant Qualitative Change – Revolutions in all areas of study.

Now, such researches are already being pursued, but only by a very few practitioners, and such papers as this must attempt to recruit ever more colleagues to this vital task. Thus, this paper will change the usual form, and will attempt to make illustrative links with other work in the area by special included panels, usually involving a picture or diagram, and an indication of where this can be looked up to pursue that particular line.

Clearly, this cries out for hyperlinks and relational databases web-wide, but differs in that the present available software does NOT involve adjustment either in the sending paper, or in the “sent-to” paper. So, that is too independent of any cross paper intentions, and that doesn’t always help. So, such use is not implemented here. It is, instead, beginning to find a way, which will hopefully transform the means to fit particular content. What you will find here is, of course, only a first step.

Issue 25 of SHAPE

New Special Issue on the Origin of Life

SHAPE Special Issue 5

An Assault on The Origin of Life
The Ground and Proposal for a new Miller's Experiment

This Special does not deliver a final solution to the Origin of Life on Earth, but it does both ask and answer many of the crucial questions without which such a task would be impossible.

It defines a new and necessary standpoint for a scientific attempt on this question, which has from the outset been forced to abandon the current, universally accepted ground for all scientific work. It has had to turn its back upon Plurality (the Whole and its Parts), Universal Reductionism, Formal Logic and the wholly idealistic belief in Reality being the product of eternal formal laws, and replace all of these with a steadfastly holisitic view, which turns out to be the only way to address revolutionary Qualitative Changes as are clearly involved in this stupendous Event.

It turns away from the Sciences of Stability and towards the Science of Qualitative Change, and to do this, extracts from a wide range of similar Emergence Events, what must be involved to create the Wholly New. But, to make such a switch is, without doubt, highly dangerous, because unlike the consensus standpoint in the Stability Sciences there is NO well-defined and soundly established standpoint and tested methodology. Nowhere can a holisitic scientific standpoint be looked up and implemented. It has had to be devised! And because of this, it will necessarily be incomplete.

Nevertheless, the gains that came from even a few sound holistic priciples, and a great deal of research, have made the outlines of such an approach conceivable and indeed applicable too. 

The crucial and necessary task was to rescue Miller's wonderful experiment from its unavoidable cul-de-sac, in which, though it was able to demonstrate that amino acids could be naturally produced from an emulation of the Earth's primaeval atmosphere and shallow tropical seas, it could not reveal how this had happened. To intervene in such a complex natural process to check what was going on would have broken the isolation necessary to make it entirely self-moving. But, by employing the new standpoint and using the latest available techniques, those weaknesses have been solved, and a major part of this Special Issue is in a long paper defining the New Miller's Experiment.

Other questions, answered incorrectly by many at present, who are more influenced by the need to acquire funding or join the consensus, than in finding the truth, had to be properly established as part of this approach. The questions "Where?", "What?", "How?", "When?", and "Why?" were addressed, and many important discoveries found, which turned out to be vital in tackling this, the most important of all current scientific questions.

A type of Truly Natural Selection, before Life had arrived, had to be established, and shown to be instrumental in a rapid, directed rush-to-order in this Event. And most important of all was the realisation of unavoidable osciallation between long-term stability, and episodic revolutionary Emergence Events, which constitute the actual rhythm of Development in Reality. This was finally released in 2010 as The Theory of Emergences, and published in a previous Special on this Journal. Finally, the various build-up-to and analyse-down-to routes to the Origin of Life were shown to be profoundly mistaken, and the essential nature of both DNA and the Cell as being the point at which Life actually appeared, debunked to allow the addressing of the real questions.

I have now contributed six years to tackling these questions, and I hope that this initial Special (there will also be several others) will help others to also tread the new exciting path of Qualitative Holistic Science that is being erected now!

Read the Issue on Shape

The Life Factory

(Natural Selection before Life?)

Perhaps surprisingly, scientists have finally returned to Miller’s famous experiment concerning the Origin of Life on Earth, but with the purpose of going beyond the limited achievements of that effort so many years ago (1952). In an article in New Scientist (2797) by Katherine Sanderson the ideas of Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow were presented, which put forward a new slant on that experiment. Along with the rest of the NASA-led sheep, he is persuaded that Life did NOT originate in such circumstances as were the basis for Miller’s Experiment, but in much more surprising places, such as the “black smokers” at the bottom of the oceans, or even at one of the many other unlikely places (that could even be found elsewhere in the Solar System, and even more distantly in the Universe, and hence justify the funding that NASA needs “to investigate”)

Now Cronin’s other new point is that there must have been a whole series of developments in the chemistry involved (in our case organic chemistry, but not necessarily there in other parts of the Universe) prior to Life. And in this he is certainly correct!

Of course, the actual mechanism for selection and development, or even “evolution” in these non-living things could not be Darwin’s Natural Selection, for the processes involved in that are predicated upon Life already being in existence, and upon competition between living organisms.
So some very different form of selection and consequent development must have occurred based upon an entirely different mechanism, to take the “organic broth”, to a position in which all the necessary processes, which would later be included into Life itself were made available.
NOTE: BUT both he, and almost all others investigating this field, assumes that Life was the direct result of the presence of such processes, which almost automatically shifted over into this New Form. But this is NOT the only conception of what actually happened. Indeed the main alternative has Life emerging out of a precipitated catastrophe of dissolution of a prior stability.

So taking his conception of pre-Life selection AND his idea of a direct precipitation of Life, he believes that he has a way of investigating such pre-Life developments. AND, significantly, that they could happen anywhere, and NOT just on Earth. [It begins to sound even more conducive to NASA’s conceptions, does it not?]

Cronin et al do indeed recognise an unavoidable pre-Life development period, in which, long before we could call it Life, there were processes “competing” for the same resources, and thus producing a strong selective effect on a sufficiently initially diverse mix of processes to lead to the dominance of certain sequences of systems of processes. Indeed, though his method is to establish such processes as generally available by experiment with his Polyoxometalates, the idea has already been developed theoretically by this author (J. Schofield) in Organic Chemistry in his paper Truly Natural Selection (2009), and published the following year in SHAPE Journal on the Internet. But Cronin’s experiment expects what he calls autonomous developments to occur right there in his apparatus, and considers that the only extras required to take things to significant levels, will be the external adjustments to various available parameters, and this is, I’m afraid, doomed to failure.

This is because he assumes a continuous, incremental series of steps travelling uninterruptedly through to Life itself, and that is never how such things actually develop. Such revolutionary New Levels never appear surreptitiously and automatically, but ONLY via what are generally termed Revolutions, or more technically as Emergences.

Now such Events do indeed happen throughout the history of Reality, and they always the absolute opposite of continuous and incremental changes into the New. On the contrary, they are invariably initiated by a wholesale collapse of the till-then established Stability, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics types of dissociative processes grow at an increasing rate, until they pass a crucial threshold and precipitate a cataclysmic avalanche of dissociations. This catastrophe seems to be sending things careering back towards an inevitable oblivion.
But it doesn’t do that!

Research into such Events has shown that ONLY via such an almost total dismantling of the prior stability can the available processes begin to rapidly form new systems unhindered by the strong forces of stability, which actually allowed the prior Level’s continuing stability. Only when those conservative processes are finally gone, could the actual possibilities of unhindered competition begin to form systems, which could ultimately be resolved into a single dominant system being finally established as the new Level. Life was no automatic transformation, but a successful Revolution, made possible by a prior, and almost total, collapse, of the preceding stability. Only when the old Level is dead could constructive (opposite to the Second Law) developments actually succeed.

Without any idea of the trajectories within an Emergence, NO experiment could ever be conceived of (never mind constructed) to facilitate these necessary Events. Cronin will produce only a confirmation that selection is possible, but the whole dynamic essential for a revolutionary overturn will NOT be present, and as with Miller’s magnificent attempt, it will not lead to real gains on the Origin of Life ON EARTH!

NOTE: This author’s (J. Schofield) design for a new Miller’s Experiment is already available via the SHAPE Journal’s Blog on the Internet.

I, Algorithm

(or Artificial Intelligence with Probabilities)

This article in New Scientist (2797) by Anil Ananthaswamy describes how the old (and now dead) Artificial Intelligence based on Formal Logic and Neural Networks has been re-vamped by the inclusion of Noise and Probabilities. It is, I’m afraid, not a new and great step forward, but an old “solution” to the unanswerable problem, “How do you improve upon a purely formal and pluralistic, and hence totally unchanging, artificial system, which is intended to deliver some sort of machine- based intelligence?”

So, instead of strict determinism only, you merely need to add a bit of random chance, and then deal in the probabilities of various alternative outcomes.To put this new system into the language of the participants, these new systems of Artificial Intelligence “add uncertainty to Formal Logic – in order to reason in a noisy and chaotic World”. It is a proposed “new” application of the same standpoint as was used in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory almost a century before. But the real world is NOT basically deterministic PLUS “noise”! It is holistic! And to attempt to analyse it pluralistically is doomed to failure. So the trick, as usual, is to continue with that old methodology, but to heighten the “flavour” with the added “spice” of Random Noise and the coherence of Statistical Methods – using averages and probabilities on top of a still wholly deterministic basis.

Now, to echo the revolution that occurred in Sub Atomic Physics may appear to be an important development, and in the same way may allow better predictions in this sphere as it did in Physics, but in BOTH areas it certainly does NOT deliver the Truth! In this particular instance it seems to apply very well in the area of infectious diseases, but we have to be clear why it works there, but also, and most importantly, why it isn’t the general solution that it is claimed to be.

It works when many factors are acting simultaneously, and with roughly equal weights. In such circumstances many alternative diagnoses are available, and hence various distinct results are possible. The important question is, “What is the correct diagnosis in a given particular case?”

Now Neural Networks had delivered a system that could be modified to more closely match real weightings of various alternative situations, but they were crude to say the least: absolutely NO indication of why and how these changes were effected were revealed. It was merely data without a cause!
Now this new version of AI returns to such ideas, but adds the 1764 ideas of Bayes embodied in the Theorem which carries his name:- which is,

if the conditional probability of Q implies the conditional probability of P
then
the conditional probability of P implies the conditional probability of Q - [Bayes Theorem]

And this was for the first time a basis for being used with Causes and Effects, not only in the usual direction but backwards too (that is diagnostically).

The constructed systems were so-called Bayesian Networks, where the variables were initially purely random, that is of equal weight, BUT thereafter dependant on every other involved variable. Tweak the value of one and you alter the probability distribution of all of the others. Now, this, on the face of it, appears to be very close to Holism, but has a clearly fictitious starting point, where all are equally probable. The “saving grace” was then that if you knew some of the variables you could infer the probabilities of the other contributions. Now, when you think about it, it doesn’t seem likely. Starting from a wholly fictitious starting point, why should the inclusion of some reliable data move ALL of the probabilities in the right direction? Clearly such systems and associated methods would have to be very close to Iterative Numerical Methods, and hence dependant on a convergent starting point for a useful outcome. And, as with such numerical methods, these too needed to be refined and improved until they began to become much more reliable than prior methods.

Even so, it is clear that such methods are full of dangers. How do you know whether you are considering all the necessary factors? Gradually researchers began to produce models in certain areas which were much more reliable. The key was to build them so that new data could be regularly included, which modified the included probability distributions.

But, as it did not deal with answering the question, “Why?”, but only the question, “How?”, it was still dependant on the old methodology, even if it was overlaid with Bayesian add-ons.

Indeed, to facilitate such programs, new languages began to be developed specially designed to help construct such self-modifying models.
To give some idea of their powers AND limitations, it is worth listing the principles on which they were based.

1.Equal likeliness of all contributing factors must be the starting point
2.Algorithms must be very general
3.New data must be straightforwardly included to update the probabilities.

Now, this is clearly the ONLY way that the usual pluralistic conceptions and analyses can be used in a holistic World. The basis is still Formal Logic, but real measured data can modify an initial model in which everything affects everything else, but as to how they do it, there are NO revelations. The ever-new data merely adjusts less and less arbitrary figures, and, by this alone, the model improves. The model learns nothing concrete about relations, but improves as a predictor, based on regularly updated data.

Nevertheless. There could be no guarantees. It is a pragmatic method of improvement and NOT a scientific one.

Also experience has shown that the gathering of new data can be altogether too narrow, and the seriousness with which it is collected much too slight for the methods to always be depended upon. Behind the robot diagnostic program, a very experienced “doctor” would certainly come in handy!
There is also the problem of ”current ideas” guiding the actions of the data collectors, and hence “tending” to confirm those current ideas. You cannot discover a new cause, if you are not measuring for it, can you? The method is NOT a genuine holistic one!

And the most important omission has to be that Time and Trajectory are not part of the schemas. Miller’s famous Experiment was indeed holistic, and produced amino acids from a modelled holistic system, but it too lacked Time and Trajectory information. This author’s (Jim Schofield) redesign of Miller’s Experiment has the same core set up as in the original, but surrounded by a time-triggered set of diagnostic sub-experiments, regularly sampling what was present at crucial positions throughout the set up and throughout the whole time that it was running. The results would then have to be laid out on a series of related timelines, showing WHAT was present and WHEN. The relationships over time and place would then be available and sequences and even cycles of processes could be revealed and interpreted.

The half-cock nature of the latest version of model based on Neural Networks but involving Bayesian principles, though it will produce ever better simulation-type computer programs, is still immovably grounded on pluralist principles, and so will be limited in its applications, and most important of all, will REDUCE the amount of real analysis and explanation to the Lowest Common Denominator of “the computer says that…..”

The Search for Holistic Science

 Perhaps the most important current work of this author is concerned with that crucial Emergence which brought about the Origin of Life on Earth. It is NOT a physical, a chemical or even a biological investigation, but a philosophical one! The revelation of the crucial trajectory of Qualitative Change via such a revolutionary Event, such as an Emergence, must be at least the initial goal And one of the latest pieces of work in this field is perhaps epitomised by the Synopsis of paper IV in a series of papers on the philosophical and methodological implications of Miller’s Experiment. The papers themselves obviously give the full story, but when I had to concentrate the content of this particular piece into a Synopsis, I realised that it captured the work in the fewest possible words, while delivering its purpose in the way that I would have liked. It is included here to introduce the reader to this work, which not only addresses the issues in defining an Holistic Science, but begins to suggest the way forward via a re-running of Miller’s Experiment in a new Holistic way which would reveal the inner processes of that epoch-making contribution.

THE SYNOPSIS OF THE PROPOSAL FOR A NEW MILLER’S EXPERIMENT PAPER IV.

1. Miller's experiment was holistic! It used pluralisitic means, but for a different purpose: it was to keep the initial primaeval mix unadulterated. It's controlled mini-world was a Model of the primaeval world before Life.
2. But what had actually happened in the apparatus was, and still is, unknown, and could thereafter ONLY be used as an argument for the natural Origin of Life, but not exactly how it occured. It was not, and could not be, followed up.
3. This, and many other experiments (such as those by Oparin), couldn't be carried further because of current experimental method and its generated assumptions about Reality. The crucial missing element was an awareness of the role of Emergent events.
4. Indeed, even after Emergences were recognised as having occurred, their content was wholly unknown, and experiments such as those by Miller & Oparin were misinterpreted as being part of those events, whereas they were really only necessary precursors happening prior to the precipitation of the revolution itself.
5. A random-chance conjunction of all these precursors became the standard assumption as to how Emergences did what they did, but that model was certainly quite mistaken. For it involved a wholly positive, tide-of-progress process and Emergences were certainly NO such events.
6. They were, initially at least, cataclysms of destruction, wherein the past stabilities were first gradually and then acceleratingly, dismantled into a kind of chaos. The usual model, on the other hand, assumed that a trillion-to-one chance would definitely happen if Reality had 1 trillion chances, but that retrospective definition cannot be applied to creation.
7. An Emergence had to radically alter probabilities. And it did just that! The initial phase conformed with the famed Second Law of Thermodynamics, and resulted in something very like chaos. But in so doing it provided the conditions for a new start, and impossible odds were first shortened to probable and then to inevitable.
8. In fact the significant precursors for an Emergence were mostly those pressing towards a dissolution of the status quo, and such a disaster would always be the initial outcome. But as all positive feedback avalanches also contain the necessities for their own termination, so it was with Emergences.
9. The second phase of a completed Emergence would always be one in which the detritus of the old regime, plus the unfulfilled possibilities such as are demonstrated in Miller's Experiment would come together in new ways in the creation of a wholly new regime.
10. It must be the content of the processes of an Emergence which will provide the ground for the creation of a vital new approach to Science. The whole trajectory from incipient breakdown, through total dissolutions, and then upwards to a new regime, with new possibilities, must be tackled and solved.
11. The first ideas currently suggested are of a series of avalanches of Change, removing the old maintaining processes, which subsequently allowed new mutually conducive, and hence mutually supporting processes to emerge as part of a wholly new order.
12. The crisis at the end of the Cretaceous was such an Emergence, and the gains of Cosmology in the 20th century were also replete with other Physical Emergences in the Evolution of the Universe.
13. But these are, as yet, NOT co-ordinated into a new hollisitc Scientific Method which addresses unfettered Reality directly!
14. Even the mass of pluralist scientists have implicitly taken on the hollistic World in their attempts at Simulations. But they do not have a methodology, and instead impose a 'Threshold & Switch' method of dealing with qualitative Change. It will not do in dealing with creation...

This is of a paper written in July 2009, which was proposed would be published in the SHAPE Journal sometime in 2011, but it certainly cannot wait its turn in that very long queue, so it is flagged HERE and NOW, by this synopsis, and made available in full to all those interested in this vital and revolutionary area of research. The work involved is surely too broad and important to be undertaken by a single individual, and it is hoped that this publication will elicit a response form those who agree with the quest, and even from those who would like to participate.

You can download the PDF of paper IV here