Defining life: as emergent protein molecular property (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 27, 2016, 13:23 (3102 days ago) @ David Turell

Again I will select quotes:-QUOTE: "The mathematical biologist Robert Rosen concluded that living systems are complex systems that are closed to efficient causes. They are systems capable of self-regulation. […] Only the dynamic cell model satisfies Rosen's conditions for living systems.”-The dynamic ability of cells/cell communities to self-regulate is the essence of my own hypothesis concerning the whole process of evolution.-QUOTE: "Some proteins catalyze reactions, but many, as Dennis Bray has observed, govern the transfer and processing of information. 	
Because of their high degree of interconnection, systems of interacting proteins act as neural networks trained by evolution to respond appropriately to patterns of extracellular stimuli.
"Even primitive microbes exhibit purposeful behavior, such as quorum sensing, chemotaxis, and phototaxis. " -DAVID: … Life requires the transfer of information using protein molecules. The author presents my idea that protein molecular reactions are equivalent to neural activity.-And he presents my idea that even primitive microbes behave purposefully. And autonomously, as confirmed by the important experiment below:-QUOTE: “The authors concluded that the bacterium was able to select between attractors each adapted to the appropriate nutrient conditions much more rapidly than conventional theory would predict.”-This was a test “to see how a bacterium responds to previously un-encountered environmental conditions.” You are therefore faced with a stark choice: either your God preprogrammed this selection 3.8 billion years ago, or he saw what Akikio Kashiwagi was up to and stepped into the laboratory to guide the bacterium, or the bacterium worked out its own solution autonomously. -QUOTE: “Evolution is often seen as a struggle for survival among species. Darwin's third chapter in the Origin is, after all, entitled “Struggle for Existence.” But if a stable ecosystem is an attractor state, as I would propose, predation cannot be on the only guarantor of its stability. A steady state between competitive and cooperative behavior is inescapable. Cooperation in nature is sometimes called symbiosis.”!-Margulis got there 30 years ago: “The view of evolution as a chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of Darwin's notion of "survival of the fittest," dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking. Life forms multiplied and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them.” (Microsmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)) -David's comment: This is an example of balance of nature. All symbiosis is part of the balance. […] The honeyguide chicks are an example of an unexplained wonder of nature, perhaps God's intervention.-Of course symbiosis entails balance. Unfortunately, your “balance of nature” has hitherto entailed a convoluted attempt to explain why your God specially “guided” all the innovations and natural wonders of evolution to enable some organisms to eat while others (99% of them) went extinct. Perhaps we can forget that now, though I don't know why God would have to intervene and “guide” the chicks to the beeswax. Is it not possible that certain instincts are passed on by cell memory?