Earth-life's wide horizon

May 24-25-26 2005, Dov, in The Brights forum.

Dear Beto Vianna,

(A)

(1) You suggest that my statement "Human cultural aspects, ALL cultural aspects, function for individual humans and for human communities of ALL sizes and all phenotypes (distinct ethnic/national/cultural communities) in the same manner and for the same ends as biological systems function in cells" is a Belief.

My above statement is not a belief. It is an obvious fact, just as day and night etc.,

(2) You suggest that my thought "we are part of a revolutionary evolution second only to the origin of the procariotic cell itself" may be like Teilhard de Chardin and many other mystic thinkers believed?

I do not understand what you are writing about and I do not care to find out what it is all about. I simply state what I think.

Respectfully,

Dov.

(B)

Dear Beto Vianna, I also enjoy a civil exchange…but I dislike verbiage, so please forgive my curtness:

(1) All social processes (in ALL mono- and multi-cell organisms) are, fractal-wise, a higher level/more complex manifestations of cell metabolism processes, which are - in their turn -manifestations of the cooperative venture of the genes that are members of genome communes cooperatives, the genes that started out singly (pre-cells) and evolved into chromosomal cooperatives simply since by cooperative route survival is most effective.

(2) Cell metabolism is not an EXAMPLE of social interaction. It is the The BASE FRACTAL BRICK that eventually evolved into cells interaction in communities of mono cells and further into interaction between non-similar varieties of cells and still further in communities of multicell organisms including humans.

(3) And I am firmly convinced that the cultural evolution of humans via development of intelligent communication, leading to much and ever increasing control of the life-circumstances of humans, in lieu of adapting physiologically to changing life circumstances, IS as great and significant a revolutionary evolution in the history of Earth's Life as the celling of the early genes.

(C)

I am also convinced that:

(1) BV :"You put the history of life beginning with genes, and cascading "fractally" from genes to agregate of genes to agregate of agregate of genes. Well, that´s again something you may firmly be convinced about, but I don´t share your convictions. Genes are an important part of molecular exchanging in cells, but I cannot see them as free-ranging entities because all their activity must be embedded in a higher level system. My guess is that we need an auto-organizing compound to evolve first, before genes start making sense in a biological system. But this is only a guess, as yours is."

DH : I am also convinced that (a) cell(s) did not appear on Earth ex-machina, (b) an organism is a temporary-energy-storage system, a bubble of energy, (c) "life", a replicating energy-bubble, happened in form of mono gene(s)in a constellation comprising the presence of its molecular precursors + their predecessors, in a succession of energetically driven steps, (d) it is the "lifelihood" of genes that makes us and all other living systems on Earth Living organisms, and (e) evolution has been the route of Life's complexing since the first replication of the first gene.

(2) BV : "As for humans, you have shown in your own text how difficult it is to put their "specialness" in absolute terms. "Intelligent communication" is a relative concept, "control of the life-circumstances" is a relative concept" and "adapting physiologically to changing life circumstances" is something every single cell do all the time both in its life cycle and philogenetically. But this is something I´m only firmy convinced of."

DH : Each and every one of our capabilities and functions is inherited from our predecessors including communication. However, our unique "further complexing" of communication is the added "intelligent" level that is the enabler of human knowledge for the novel revolutionary organism capability of extensively modifying its living circumstances instead of physiologically adapting to changing circumstances. I am not concerned with EXACT definitions of terms; I am simply listing the general outline of Life's evolution per my best present information.

(D) Wide Horizon of Life

(1) I blushingly admit that I have neither read anywhere nor copied from somewhere the evolution ideas/schemes I posted. I confess to being the culprit. They are simply my reflections, of an 80-yr old avid follower of strictly straight science literature.

(2) I posted the SCM topic in this forum for the purpose explained in the post, for consideration of the feasibility and incentive, if any, to advance via sponsor(s) an SCM project tagged as a Brights/Humanist project.

(3) I think that due to their immense number and complexity it is not possible to assign ordinal importance rank numbers to revolutionary junctions along the ever increasing-branching number of trails of evolution since life-time zero. It is enough to reflect with awe that it took circa 4 (four) billion years for evolution to "complexify" from single gene to highly organized and energy-efficient cells, which ushered 500 million yrs ago the era of multi-celled organisms. And I picked (a)Celling and (b)Human-Primate Intelligent-Communication (Culture/Civilization) as the obvious two grandest junctions along the trail of evolution of Life.

(4) However, I doubt that these ideas will ever be allowed wide circulation. They clash with religious faith-belief high-human-self-esteem politically-correct basis of civilized societies, thus rendering them downright subversive…