Series:
Essay #10:
Synopsis:
Causation
Origin of Life
Life begins with homeostasis, which is an active way of being in the world for the purpose of staying in the world
The origin of life is a great example of the emergence of agency and purpose. Here’s the idea: a collection of molecules achieves a minimal level of homeostasis and thereby crosses the line to become a living organism. With time and evolution, the new organism develops a particular way of maintaining homeostasis, that is, an active way of being in the world for the purpose of staying in the world. The organism purposefully directs his activities toward maintaining homeostasis and reproduction. He becomes a new, complex and emergent level of organization, one who’s more than the sum of his parts.
In his book, Infinite in All Directions, Freeman Dyson sees the origin of life as little proto-cells achieving homeostasis. Exactly how this happens, only God knows, but Mr. Dyson imagines simple proto-cells passing back and forth over the boundary line between life and non-life. Imagine trillions of little variants existing in any moment at any place, each an experiment, with some drifting back and forth between life and non-life on a regular basis-- I love this part of the story. In-between life and non-life, there’s a blended space wherein there’s no precise moment for Dr. Frankensteen (played by Gene Wilder) to shout “LIFE!”
Our little proto-cell has roughly the same molecules on either side of the line, but by crossing to our side, he’s already regulating and organizing himself. Life begins when proto-cell organizes his own parts into a whole. Recall the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus “the Obscure,” who spoke of a river as remaining the same despite constant turnover in its constituent matter, water rushing past. Likewise, proto-cell’s parts are in constant flux yet proto-cell is alive because he maintains himself, a constancy within flux. Which is why homeostasis is the beginning of self. A proto-cell is a self who is aware of non-self all around him, and who works-hard-to-stay-himself.
Our proto-cell is self-organizing, but he neither needs nor has precise control over his molecular functions. His cytoplasm probably is filled with useless junk, like a backyard out in the sticks. He has a high tolerance for errors and defects. In fact, the volume of errors is a strength: Mr. Dyson considered “looseness of structure and tolerance of errors” to be primary requirements for living systems. He said, “Tolerance of junk is one of life’s most essential characteristics. In every sphere of life, whether cultural, economic, ecological or cellular, the systems which survive best are those which are not too fine-tuned to carry a large load of junk.”
Proto-cell doesn’t have to be pretty; he just has to achieve homeostasis and keep doing it. Genetic drift feeds the process of evolution even in the absence of competition. As for reproduction, our proto-cell might engage in a simple form of cell division, like one big cell splitting in two, and the division is full of more errors. In brief, our proto-cell has evolved his own sloppy way of living, dignity be damned. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Abe Lincoln. Someone asked him how long his legs were. Abe replied, just long enough to reach the ground.
Next, take a birds-eye view to see proto-cell as one participant in a complex environment. Proto life lived together in a tangled mess with messy relationships. Some protos ate others, some lived off the waste of others, and all co-evolved with viruses. Per Mr. Dyson, viruses travelled from organism to organism sharing genetic information on an open-source basis. The result is a super-mess: gazillions of proto-cells evolving together and achieving homeostasis in a web of relationships too complicated to unravel.
Given the immense numbers and diversity of proto-life, and a billion years, our proto-cell evolves his own way of being. He knows what he knows and does what he does, and now he can’t cross back over the line except through death. Proto-cell is qualitatively different from the other side of the line. Why? because proto-cell moves himself with purpose: to survive and reproduce.
Life is purposeful, and homeostasis is a teleologic law. Everything that a proto-thing is and does connects with one purpose-- to stay in existence including by reproduction. In the blended space between life and death, any configuration that enhances life gets selected for, that is, any set of actions that help the proto-thing stay in existence will stay in existence along with the proto-thing. That’s why Freeman Dyson equated life with homeostasis. The act of maintaining oneself in existence (homeostasis) is the first requirement of life.
I love the story of homeostasis. I love it for the same reasons as Freeman Dyson, who said in Infinite in All Directions,
“I have been trying to imagine a framework for the origin of life, guided by a personal philosophy which considers the primal characteristics of life to be homeostasis rather than replication, diversity rather than uniformity, the flexibility of the cell rather than the tyranny of the gene, the error tolerance of the whole rather than the precision of the parts.”
Life has purpose, that’s a fact. What a wonderful fact! Material causation pushes a living being from behind and teleologic causation pulls him from the front. A living being is a passive victim of material causation, and at the same time, he organizes and directs the systems within which material causation grinds its inevitable path. He works-hard-to-stay-himself, to survive and reproduce, actively stretching forward in pursuit of these teleologic goals… and other, more transcendent goals.
