h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Learning which is not encoded in the genome enables life to transcend the chemical-determinism. And it's yet another area where we humans discover that we're not as different from everything else as we might like to think.

er...I'm going to have to disagree with life "beating" entropy. Disorded is always on the increase, that is pretty darn fundamental. The increase of entropy does not mean however that local ordering cannot take place, the overall law is that the entropy of the whole universe is increasing constantly. If life orders itself, which it does, rather spectacularly that simply means a massive increase in entropy elsewhere. Sorry to be picky but you cannot beat entropy.

Yeah, that was a sweeping final sentence Orcus but it was 3am and my brain packed in before my fingers did. I really only meant local little eddies of order in the general disorder. Not a subject I know anything much about - no order in my life

About the ur-gene: I did read about it but just having read an article is hardly any kind of proof. It had me convinced at the time but your argument is also persuasive. One interesting thing about genes is that as long as they work well, they don't change - not unless something better comes along. Just because viruses clutter up our genome with their genes and mutations occur, that won't necessarily change a good gene in the long run. If a vital gene gets damaged in an individual, by mutation or some viral DNA inserted in the middle of it, then it won't be selected. I don't know enough about the subject to really argue a strong case for the preservation of an ur-gene though.

I couldn't possibly correct you on anything you've written. I asked the question "how did life get started?" because I knew just enough to make me want to know more. Everything you've said seems perfectly sensible and convincing.

I've been trying to work out the reservation I have about life "striving" to survive. The problem is, every time I think about it, the argument sinks into the mire of philosophy. It's because mostly, modern humans believe they have free will and determine their own path. People believe they do the things they do for carefully considered reasons - not because they're being driven by a chemically-determined predisposition. That may be a comfortable delusion for them. People think they did a thing because they "wanted" to - but where did that "want" come from? Did they decide to "want" to do that thing. Anyway, the short of it is, I feel that what life does in order to survive is somewhat more than have a chemical predisposition but "strive" seems to overstate it - especially in the context of things like viruses. Could you say a crystal had a propensity or predisposition to grow when suitable material was available? If so, I think what life does is somewhat more than that.

Anyway, what it comes down to is that I agree with you and my only little reservation, now I've had time to think about it, is a semantic one.

Semantics is the study of meaning, so if you say something is "just a matter of semantics", you're saying it's "just a matter of the meaning of words".

Yep. I'm saying I agree with you. I'd just like a better way of describing the way life *seems* to "strive" for survival than a "chemical predisposition".

Isn't it quite bizarre that of all these people here, all talking about how life started that no-one has yet said God.

Not that I'm saying that the Biblical version of creation is true - although lots still believe it is. My point is that within about 100 years everyone's opinion has changed from Genesis to Big Bang/Acid/Planet rotations ...

Talk about the age of science - proof indeed !

I read a quote from a scientist that might be fitting now. That the thing that defines life, is that it can die.

Are you sure nobody has mentioned God? Read between the lines. Could 'Chemical Predisposition' be just another word for 'God'?

I was brought up as a catholic. My parents were scientists who seemed quite happy to acknowledge that evolution explained the way life developed as it has.

It's a mechanism. If you believe in a god (which I don't nowadays), then he, she or it created the mechanism. If you don't, the mechanism was derived in some other way. The point is that evolution fits the evidence.

I am unaware of any evidence for "creation science", but then most of us probably adhere to the idea that scientific evidence is used to test a hypothesis and can disprove it, but that nothing is ever absolutely proved to be right.

Evolution could be a mechanism set in motion by God. But then why the hell did he try to pull that Adam & Eve stuff on us in the Bible? I don´t think the iehovan concept of God can go along with evolution.

Adam and Eve is just a story...

If that is so, maybe God is also just a character in a story.

This thread seems to have run into the ground, but it prompted some excellent debate - my own thoughts on the subject were never so well-formed before. Is there a full guide entry here?

I have put up a link on my personal space, about scientists who claims to have found proof that life came from space.

Fine, but as in my first post to this thread, that does not change the problem of how life started it merely moves the problem elsewhere.

I just thought it would be an interesting article. But there is one thing it changes. If life appeared in space, it could have taken longer than those 600 million years it did on Earth.

Yeah but the question did not specify any length of time (and incidentally as far as I know, the rock records show that there has been life here for considerably longer that 600 million years, more like 3,5 billion I think).
I had a look at that article (I should post the links elsewhere if I was you, they won't survive in your journal as they're external links).
Interesting that the scientists who found it claim that the DNA is not similar to any life form on earth yet criticising scientists say its too similar. Huh?
I have to admit to not really believing them, there is not really enough evidence in that article to convince me.
Remember the bruhaha about life on Mars the other year? You will find a respected scientist who believes that very hard to find (ask Patrivk Moore ).

Don't be so quick off the mark Mund. I haven't been on line for a couple of days because I'm a bit incapacitated but that doesn't mean I've run out of curiosity on this one. I've been giving it a bit more thought. The chemical predisposition idea that I'm almost but not entirely happy with ... there's more to be said about it. Casting back to the conditions that made evolution possible, like a stable rotation, the right size planet, water, atmosphere and so on: should any of those things matter to the chemical propensity for certain materials to "gravitate" together and arrange themselves into specific sequences, do you suppose?

Absolutely not Sal, chemicals display such tendencies (only different) under any conditions you care to give them, its just that life as we know it on earth would not survive (at least the higher members) unless the conditions you mention are right, the molecules in us simply would not survive, they would degraded either by intense radiation (solar wind), heat or cold. Rapid variations in these extremes of these things would also not allow our own biology to regulate itself at all well. Not to say that some form of life might not adapt of course.

I wasn't saying this subject was finished, just that there was a lot of good stuff already accumulated and things were slowing down. I'm quite happy to give it more time, but it's certainly the kind of subject the guide needs.