Defining life: as emergent protein molecular property (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 27, 2016, 19:12 (3102 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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.-Self-regulation boils down to a feedback loop of regulatory organic molecules reacting with one after another to achieve the right levels of production or whatever.->> DAVID: … Life requires the transfer of information using protein molecules. The author presents my idea that protein molecular reactions are equivalent to neural activity.
> 
> dhw: 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.”-All through molecular reactions which control processes and act just like the equivalent of neural activity, as the author states.
> 
> dh: 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.-The bacteria just used an available alternative pathway. This has been shown over and over in Lenski's E. coli work. -> 
> 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.
> 
> dhw: Of course symbiosis entails balance....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?-Agreed. Very possibly instinct.