Can life be in fact just random chem reactions?Our special viewpoint as inside the system observers deceives us.

[Strange]

 

There is a basic misconception here. I am not using the term pecreption so human-centric.

Anything in the Universe can be used as a reference frame. Remember the whole theory of relativlity that is based on reference frames. There are no absolute observers.

 

That is about relative states of motion. Can you explain how it applies to chemistry? You seem to be using it as a metaphor that allows you to say "everything is relative". That is not what it means.

 

Additionally, chemicals would diffuse around not allowing complex reactions to be sustained.

 

I have already said that this is a distinguishing feature of life. Life is self-contained and self-sustaining. The chemical reactions of living organisms take place in cells (or collections of cells). So your hypothesis is immediately falsified by your own criteria. As was pointed out nearly 50 posts ago.

[Moontanman]

Roger. However, if you are saying that life and it's constituent parts are predestined I strongly disagree.

 

 

 

Predestined?

 

pre·des·tine

prēˈdestin/

verb

past tense: predestined; past participle: predestined

1. (of God) destine (someone) for a particular fate or purpose.

   "Calvinists believed that every person was predestined by God to go to heaven or to hell"

   • determine (an outcome or course of events) in advance by divine will or fate.

     "she was certain that fate was with her and everything was predestined"

      

     synonyms:

     preordained, ordained, predetermined, destined, fated

     "I find it hard to believe that our lives are predestined

I'm not sure why you would think predestined has anything to do with organic molecules being present in space.

 

minaras is this what you are asserting?

 

​Since chemistry is deterministic and not random and certain chemicals are more common than others and more reactive than others I think it can be said that certain chemical combinations are more likely to form than others. H2O for instance is the second most common molecule in the universe. This has nothing to with gods or anything supernaturally predestined.

[Acme]

 

Roger. However, if you are saying that life and it's constituent parts are predestined I strongly disagree.

Predestined?

 

Yes; as in

synonyms:

predetermined, ...

​Since chemistry is deterministic and not random and certain chemicals are more common than others and more reactive than others I think it can be said that certain chemical combinations are more likely to form than others. H2O for instance is the second most common molecule in the universe. This has nothing to with gods or anything supernaturally predestined.

Chemistry is only deterministic insomuch as under the right conditions certain chemical reactions take place. That the right conditions occur, is random. Edited December 21, 2014 by Acme

[Ten oz]

Just read through this whole thread and am glad to see that acme and Moontanman brought DNA into the discussion. When people say life has never been created by science in a lab DNA is the keystone they are referencing whether they realize it or not. Amino acids and proteins have been created in a lab however without DNA to organize and structure those organics there isn't life. So all the back and forth about chemical reactions and proteins are somewhat meaningless. Random versus nom-random too is a bit of a bottomless pit as everything has a pattern (weather, moon cycles, the earth's , etc). So randomness can be tricky to define in this conversation. The real question here imo is how does RNA then DNA form from scratch? I think science has already accounted for the rest of what is necessary for life.

Edited December 22, 2014 by Ten oz

[Acme]

Just read through this whole thread and am glad to see that acme and Moontanman brought DNA into the discussion. When people say life has never been created by science in a lab DNA is the keystone they are referencing whether they realize it or not. Amino acids and proteins have been created in a lab however without DNA to organize and structure those organics there isn't life. So all the back and forth about chemical reactions and proteins are somewhat meaningless. Random versus nom-random too is a bit of a bottomless pit as everything has a pattern (weather, moon cycles, the earth's , etc). So randomness can be tricky to define in this conversation. The real question here imo is how does RNA then DNA form from scratch? I think science has already accounted for the rest of what is necessary for life.

Indeed we have been down the random rabbit hole ad nauseam. Bunch of damn nonsense in my humble opinion. Anyway, my point is that there is no guarantee life has to start, or will start, or is predestined in the sense that life is predetermined by the simple presence of chemicals. Whatever circumstances led to DNA coming together on Earth, be it happening in water, or clay, or at a particular pressure or temperature etcetera, those circumstances occurred by chance. Whether we can reproduce those circumstances or not is irrelevant to them having happened at least once here.

[Ten oz]

^^I agree but have a caveat. I would like to know how DNA is created. I think such would have huge technological potential.

Another thing I think is missed and believe you may have alluded to is that whether or not life happens is one in a trillion or one in ten is irrelevant. Fact is it has happened.

[Acme]

^^I agree but have a caveat. I would like to know how DNA is created. I think such would have huge technological potential.

Another thing I think is missed and believe you may have alluded to is that whether or not life happens is one in a trillion or one in ten is irrelevant. Fact is it has happened.

10-4 10-oz.

[minaras]

 

I have already said that this is a distinguishing feature of life. Life is self-contained and self-sustaining. The chemical reactions of living organisms take place in cells (or collections of cells). So your hypothesis is immediately falsified by your own criteria. As was pointed out nearly 50 posts ago.

Not even close. Chemical reactions can form chemicals with adhesive properties. Also in a soup of reactions, membranes can be created passively due to properties of the molecules. This can lead (as I said) to the whole process being multi focal rather than diffuse. So chemical isolation of biological beings can easily be a later result of the reactions rather than the initial event.

 

 

The real question here imo is how does RNA then DNA form from scratch? I think science has already accounted for the rest of what is necessary for life.

DNA is a part of the chain. Neither DNA or RNA alone or in general NO singe molecule by itself can create life. This is testable. So simple.

 

 

 

 

 

minaras is this what you are asserting?

 

​Since chemistry is deterministic and not random and certain chemicals are more common than others and more reactive than others I think it can be said that certain chemical combinations are more likely to form than others. H2O for instance is the second most common molecule in the universe. This has nothing to with gods or anything supernaturally predestined.

Yes, and in a system of complex chemical reactions some will prevail and become the end results. Through their own eyes, they have some surviving capacities over the other reactions. Its like viewing evolution from their own perspective while they study the procedures that formed them.

Just like we are chemical reactions and we are studying life, ie the whole amount of chemical reactions that are in the system that is called life on earth.

 

 

 

That is about relative states of motion. Can you explain how it applies to chemistry? You seem to be using it as a metaphor that allows you to say "everything is relative". That is not what it means.

 

What is so strange about it? Admitting relative motion made us realize that we are not living in the center of the universe. Relativity applies in everything, especially to our viewpoint or else we will believe forever that we live in the center of Existence.

[Strange]

Not even close. Chemical reactions can form chemicals with adhesive properties. Also in a soup of reactions, membranes can be created passively due to properties of the molecules. This can lead (as I said) to the whole process being multi focal rather than diffuse. So chemical isolation of biological beings can easily be a later result of the reactions rather than the initial event.

 

These sort of processes may have been part of the "pre-biotic evolution" that eventually led to living organisms. B ut they do not, by themselves, define life.

 

Relativity applies in everything

 

No it doesn't.

[minaras]

I think a very crucial question is this: If every life form suddenly disappeared from half the earth, what would happen? Would life eventually overcome this problem and re-expand to cover everything and how quickly or will it rather disappear? The chemical reactions scenario i think says that even if life overcomes, it would be slowly and only at a cost of a great decay of the existing life in the other half.

Edited January 5, 2015 by minaras

[minaras]

A new study provides further evidence that the borders between random chemistry and biology are far more blurry that was previously thought, was recently published. Shen et al. Science. Jan 2015.

All dogmas of biology (like the central dogma) are steadily proven that are incomplete in terms of describing what really happens. Every new discovery in fact shows that things in biology are in fact are much more complicated than previously thought (e.g. complexity of molecular pathways, cross talk between cells and extracellular matrix, morphological and clinical diversity of genetically identical cancer cells inside a single individual, etc). In fact every rule of biology turns out to be incomplete, and to my opinion, we steadily move to a system where biological processes resemble more to a chaotic complex arbitrary chemical reaction system.

[Strange]

A new study provides further evidence that the borders between random chemistry and biology are far more blurry that was previously thought, was recently published. Shen et al. Science. Jan 2015.

 

This one?

Rqc2p and 60S ribosomal subunits mediate mRNA-independent elongation of nascent chains

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6217/75.abstract

 

I don't have access to the full paper, but the abstract doesn't appear to support that claim. Could you explain why you think it does.

 

 

All dogmas of biology (like the central dogma)

 

Note that the central dogma of molecular biology is simply a statement of how DNA transcription works. (And, like all science, if evidence showed it to be wrong, then it would be changed.)

 

are steadily proven that are incomplete in terms of describing what really happens. Every new discovery in fact shows that things in biology are in fact are much more complicated than previously thought (e.g. complexity of molecular pathways, cross talk between cells and extracellular matrix, morphological and clinical diversity of genetically identical cancer cells inside a single individual, etc). In fact every rule of biology turns out to be incomplete,

 

That is true of all science. That is how science works.

 

and to my opinion, we steadily move to a system where biological processes resemble more to a chaotic complex arbitrary chemical reaction system

 

As chemical reactions are not arbitrary and life require stability and structure, not chaos, this is a totally unjustified extrapolation.

[cladking]

A new study provides further evidence that the borders between random chemistry and biology are far more blurry that was previously thought, was recently published. Shen et al. Science. Jan 2015.

All dogmas of biology (like the central dogma) are steadily proven that are incomplete in terms of describing what really happens. Every new discovery in fact shows that things in biology are in fact are much more complicated than previously thought (e.g. complexity of molecular pathways, cross talk between cells and extracellular matrix, morphological and clinical diversity of genetically identical cancer cells inside a single individual, etc). In fact every rule of biology turns out to be incomplete, and to my opinion, we steadily move to a system where biological processes resemble more to a chaotic complex arbitrary chemical reaction system.

 

We usually can't even see the paradigms that hide reality because we see only what we believe to be true.

 

I do disagree that the problem is from being to close but rather that we aren't close enough. We see things in terms of the constructs we build rather than looking at the parts up close.

 

You have my every sympathy.

Edited January 11, 2015 by cladking

[minaras]

cladking: sometimes truth is so easy that is so difficult for us to think so plainly and simlpy in order to reach it.

 

 

 

This one?

Rqc2p and 60S ribosomal subunits mediate mRNA-independent elongation of nascent chains

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6217/75.abstract

 

I don't have access to the full paper, but the abstract doesn't appear to support that claim. Could you explain why you think it does.

Because it slowly opens the door to unlimited alternative ways (previously unknown) that proteins can be formed, apart from that based on the central dogma. This will trigger more "out of the box" novel scientific experiments

 

 

are steadily proven that are incomplete in terms of describing what really happens. Every new discovery in fact shows that things in biology are in fact are much more complicated than previously thought (e.g. complexity of molecular pathways, cross talk between cells and extracellular matrix, morphological and clinical diversity of genetically identical cancer cells inside a single individual, etc). In fact every rule of biology turns out to be incomplete,

 

 

That is true of all science. That is how science works.

 

But where will this will lead us in the long term? Strict rules will be slowly substituted with more flexible and complicated ones, which at the end will mostly resemble to a chaotic chemical system that i described in the previous posts. Note that it was found that not even receptor activation or blocking is always complete. There are not only "on-off" positions, but most of the time there are some intermediate situations.

 

Please also note that it was recently found that immune variation in human is dictated by environment rather that the genes. Doesn't this suggest to you a trend towards inter-reacting complex chaotic systems, rather than strictly pre-specified entities with unique and robust characteristics? To me it is clear that biology will be completely substituted by biochemistry in the future.

[minaras]

Life is the result of chance events that are dictated by the laws described by physics. But why everything seems to have been set up in a way that the right rules are here to promote us and our survival?

Survival is a quality that doesn't exist anywhere in nature apart from life. Additionally, survival can be a very subjective thing. It can be observer dependent, especially if the observer is the survivor.

For instance, what is more likely to be the case?

1)That 1000....000 millions of reactions got spontaneously knit together forming an extremely sophisticated system in order to promote the survival of the organism (why?), or

2)the case is that these 100...00000 reactions are simply the result or the natural history of the chemical reactions that happened? We (aka the resulting chemical reactions) are studying this system and from our pointview these chemical reactions are sophisticated because:

a) They formed us,

b)they promoted our survival,

c)they have survival capacities (hellooo! these reactions that will prevail in the long term will do so for a reason, and they have survival advantages toward other possibilities because exactly thats what they did. They survived over others for some reasons.

d) these reasons are seen through our perspective as the qualities of life. For instance, repeatability in reactions that will help them survive in the long term because they wont lead to dead end reactions will be perceived by us (the resulting reactions) as reproduction. The same thing happens for the other qualities of life as well.

[Strange]

Life is the result of chance events that are dictated by the laws described by physics.

 

Much of what you say is just obvious, well-known science so I'm still not really sure what your point is.

 

But why everything seems to have been set up in a way that the right rules are here to promote us and our survival?

You seem to have that the wrong way round: life evolved to be the way it is because of the environment. It wasn't that life existed and then the universe was created around it.

Survival is a quality that doesn't exist anywhere in nature apart from life.

 

Stars, planets and galaxies appear to survive quite well. And did so for billions of years before life.

[minaras]

 

Stars, planets and galaxies appear to survive quite well. And did so for billions of years before life.

 

Survival exists, but does EFFORT TO SURVIVE exist anywhere else?

 

 

 

 

Much of what you say is just obvious, well-known science so I'm still not really sure what your point is.

 

You seem to have that the wrong way round: life evolved to be the way it is because of the environment. It wasn't that life existed and then the universe was created around it.

1)Life also reshapes its environment. The relationship is reciprocal.

2)I claim that the universe was created around earth. I said that they were created together and they cannot be separated. For instance, if we were the planet mars, then through our viewpoint the exact events happened to promote our specific orbit around the sun so that we would not be destroyed, the exact amount of material and dust was separated from other orbits so that we would be here today, specific elements were created and reacted with others so that we could have our specific composition, the solar system had specific distance from others so we would not be destroyed, our solar system has the right distance fro the center of our galazy, our galaxy has the right position, bing bang happened in a fortunate way, etc etc.

And as you take this further to our own existense, any complex chemical reactions systems if used as an observer perceives the system it is included as having the same properties that WE perceive (as a sum of reactions) when we observe our own system ( the whole system of reactions) in which we are included. And these properties are actually what we see as life..

[Strange]

I claim that the universe was created around earth.

 

So is this some sort of fundamentalist geocentric creationist argument then? That would explain a lot.

 

However, this claim (like so many of your others) is trivally false as the universe has existed for at least 9 billion years longer than the Earth.

Survival exists, but does EFFORT TO SURVIVE exist anywhere else?

 

Who knows. But that isn't what you said.

[Phi for All]

Survival exists, but does EFFORT TO SURVIVE exist anywhere else?

 

You often move the goalposts when confronted with objections to your arguments. This makes it hard to have a discussion.

 

I claim that the universe was created around earth. I said that they were created together and they cannot be separated. For instance, if we were the planet mars, then through our viewpoint the exact events happened to promote our specific orbit around the sun so that we would not be destroyed, the exact amount of material and dust was separated from other orbits so that we would be here today, specific elements were created and reacted with others so that we could have our specific composition, the solar system had specific distance from others so we would not be destroyed, our solar system has the right distance fro the center of our galazy, our galaxy has the right position, bing bang happened in a fortunate way, etc etc.

 

Aren't you making the puddle's claim?

 

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” --Douglas Adams

[minaras]

 

So is this some sort of fundamentalist geocentric creationist argument then? That would explain a lot.

Sorry, this was a typo. I wanted to write instead: I dont claim that....! Anyway, i think this is evident from the rest of my writings.

 

 

 

 

You often move the goalposts when confronted with objections to your arguments. This makes it hard to have a discussion.

 

Sorry for my bad writing, but i thought that it was quite obvious that while refering to the survival of biological entities, one means not the fact that an object survives, but refers to the capacity of an entity to energetically promote its own survival.

Aren't you making the puddle's claim?

 

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” --Douglas Adams

Yes! Exactly

[Phi for All]

Yes! Exactly

 

But that's absurd. The impression in the ground wasn't designed to be a puddle. It only became a puddle when the water arrived. The water was wrong about that, didn't see the truth, and evaporated in ignorance.

 

By the same token, it's absurd to think the universe was designed around us. It was here long before us. The events that led up to our development may seem highly improbable, unless you realize that we could just be the one in a trillion, the lucky formation that yielded these results. Results that only seem improbable, but the probability, since it did happen, is just 1.

[Moontanman]

I think a very crucial question is this: If every life form suddenly disappeared from half the earth, what would happen? Would life eventually overcome this problem and re-expand to cover everything and how quickly or will it rather disappear? The chemical reactions scenario i think says that even if life overcomes, it would be slowly and only at a cost of a great decay of the existing life in the other half.

 

 

Current conditions on the Earth are not conducive to the formation of life, you statement contains an assumption that needs to be supported...

Under reasonable conditions self replicating systems and life my be a thermodynamic inevitability...

 

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

 

The chemistry of the primordial soup, random mutations, geography, catastrophic events and countless other factors have contributed to the fine details of Earth’s diverse flora and fauna. But according to England’s theory, the underlying principle driving the whole process is dissipation-driven adaptation of matter.

This principle would apply to inanimate matter as well. “It is very tempting to speculate about what phenomena in nature we can now fit under this big tent of dissipation-driven adaptive organization,” England said. “Many examples could just be right under our nose, but because we haven’t been looking for them we haven’t noticed them.”

Scientists have already observed self-replication in nonliving systems. According to new research led by Philip Marcus of the University of California, Berkeley, andreported in Physical Review Letters in August, vortices in turbulent fluids spontaneously replicate themselves by drawing energy from shear in the surrounding fluid. And in a paper appearing online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael Brenner, a professor of applied mathematics and physics at Harvard, and his collaborators present theoretical models and simulations of microstructures that self-replicate. These clusters of specially coated microspheres dissipate energy by roping nearby spheres into forming identical clusters. “This connects very much to what Jeremy is saying,” Brenner said.

Besides self-replication, greater structural organization is another means by which strongly driven systems ramp up their ability to dissipate energy. A plant, for example, is much better at capturing and routing solar energy through itself than an unstructured heap of carbon atoms. Thus, England argues that under certain conditions, matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process,” he said. Condensation, wind and viscous drag are the relevant processes in these particular cases.

 

[minaras]

 

But that's absurd. The impression in the ground wasn't designed to be a puddle. It only became a puddle when the water arrived. The water was wrong about that, didn't see the truth, and evaporated in ignorance.

 

By the same token, it's absurd to think the universe was designed around us. It was here long before us. The events that led up to our development may seem highly improbable, unless you realize that we could just be the one in a trillion, the lucky formation that yielded these results. Results that only seem improbable, but the probability, since it did happen, is just 1.

Yes! And if the reference frame is the end result, it will happen every time.

[Strange]

Yes! And if the reference frame is the end result, it will happen every time.

 

You still don't know what a reference frame is, I see.

[Phi for All]

Yes! And if the reference frame is the end result, it will happen every time

 

Did I miss something? What frame of reference are you talking about?