Hello Pwcca, thanks for your comments here and elsewhere.
Seeing as Russ seems to be reluctantly otherwise occupied and SoSick has run through her usual stable of particular insights on reality, I thought I'd pick up where we left off.
We're talking about evolution here. Let's stick to that.
Actually we are talking about how we get to the point where evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - operates. To get there by purely natural means we need to get life out of non-life, and to frame this properly we need to ask these questions:
(1) what do you start with?
(2) what do you end with?
(3) how do we get from (1) to (2)?
What we start withhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbiogenesisAbiogenesis (Greek a-bio-genesis, "non biological origins") is the formation of life from non-living matter. Today the term is primarily used to refer to the chemical origin of life, such as from a 'primordial soup' or in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents, and most probably through a number of intermediate steps, such as non-living but self-replicating molecules (biopoiesis). The current models of abiogenesis are still being scientifically tested.
What we start with is the environment and chemicals that were available, as best we can tell. This now includes many amino acids that are commonly found in space. We start with a soup of complex pre-organic chemicals.
What we end withWe end with life, but it only needs to be the most primitive simplest form of life possible. This gets to the question of "what is life" - - -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeLife is a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. A physical characteristic of life is that it feeds on negative entropy.[1][2] In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrödinger, Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form (see: entropy and life).[3][4]
When we look at what an organism is we get:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisms In biology and ecology, an organism (in Greek organon = instrument) is an individual living system (such as animal, plant, fungus or micro-organism). In at least some form, all organisms are capable of reacting to stimuli, reproduction, growth and maintenance as a stable whole (after FAO[1]). An organism may be unicellular or made up, like humans, of many billions of cells divided into specialized tissues and organs.
You will notice that they do not necessarily require a
cell to qualify as life, and that the basic criteria are:
- growth through metabolism,
- reproduction,
- adaptation to environment,
- reacting to stimuli, and
- maintenance as a stable whole.
Another way you could phrase it is that "
LIFE" is something that is capable of evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.
That may be just a self-replicating molecule, capable of attracting components from which to metabolise (gain energy) and to manufacture replicas (reproduction).
Enjoy.
[color:"green"]Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s),
and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]
