1 reply to this topic

[mjsakellakis]

Imagine that you have a flask full of some molecules that move randomly and you add external energy. Let’s also assume that the molecules are a little bit sticky and they attach to each other for a while. What you will see after a while is areas of clumps and dead space. That is how disorder looks.

 

Now suppose the observer is a group of clumps. The observer may think that the purpose of this environment is to create clumps like him that die and get reborn. He be like: Hey, isn’t this place supposed to be a total chaos if you take into account the initial ingredients and the conditions? But that’s his false narrative.

 

We now know that:

1)All life relates to each other and an organism exist, because of...all the other life that exist.

2)All life is related to each other and if you consider life as a whole thing, it becomes a more disordered thing.

3)The number of chemical interactions in living systems is unimaginably large. The numbers are so vast, our intuition cannot grasp.

4)Similar systems under the same laws of nature will lead to similar results that can be perceived as periodic phenomena.

5)We ourselves are composed from tons of chemical reactions and we are a part of the resulting reactions of life, so we observe the system from an insider perspective.

 

Do the similarities between the two systems suggest that we should be cautious when we arbitrarily refer to life systems as order-generating without actually measuring their entropic changes first??

 

[mjsakellakis]

If you thoroughly analyze why every single biochemical reaction happens, you will find a clear physical reason for it. Even DNA replication is the normal development of some bonds between chemical groups. Hydrophobicity creates membranes, mictotubules follow forces, etc. The problem comes when you see them collectively, as they all seem to synchronize in order to self-organize the organism.

Here is the catch: This is a very organism-centered approach, which is a result of our anthropocentric perspective. In reality, from a strictly chemical perspective, all life (was and still) is connected. For example, an organism increases order locally in order to grow, but does so because of a complex pre-existing system and only at the expense of a bigger production of disorder in the form of waste, gasses, nutrients, etc. But this waste becomes the food of other organisms in a constant recycling of nutrients. So the chemistry of life includes everything.

But life as an entire entity is much less ordered or self-organizing. Just similar chemical systems under the same physical laws will constantly produce similar results.

And then I think its obvious that any complex event will appear as self-organizing……. from the point of view of its own results (i.e if the observer is the results).