Chapter 4
Life Evolves
4.1 Alive or Not?
We can follow the ways life evolved and try to understand, slowly entering into the
details, the way it operates, but the toughest questions are how life emerged and
what is life. The latter question is more philosophical than scientific: a philosopher’s job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing,
declared Bertrand Russell (1972) – and with neither observation nor mathematical
insight one cannot get very far. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922) was wise at this point,
observing that the solution of the problem of life is evident at the disappearance of
this problem.
In a pioneering study of this hard problem, Alexander Oparin (1924) listed
metabolism, self-reproductivity, and mutability as defining properties of life. What
is sufficient – any of these or all of them? A virus replicates but needs the facilities
of an infected organism or cell to do so, and it lacks self-sustained metabolism. Is
it alive? Some answer “yes” and some “no”. A computer program (or a computer
virus) replicates – is it alive? Hardly. A robot can manufacture other robots. Even
a book replicates in some way but, not unlike a virus, it needs a printer. All of the
above are mutable, even a book. A fellow philosophical question is: what is consciousness? As it goes with all philosophical questions, they can be and have been
discussed for centuries. It was easier once when everything could at the end of the
day be attributed to God. There are grey border areas between the black and the
white, but our intuition tells us what is certainly alive or aware of itself and what is
certainly not.
Traditional notions of the origin of life were rather contradictory. On the one
hand, everything was stated clearly: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass,
etc., and two days latter God created great whales, and every living creature that
moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every
winged fowl after his kind, and God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind,
and finally, before retiring for a good rest on the Sabbath, God created man in his
43
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
L. Pismen, Morphogenesis Deconstructed, The Frontiers Collection,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36814-2_4
Life Evolves
4.1 Alive or Not?
We can follow the ways life evolved and try to understand, slowly entering into the
details, the way it operates, but the toughest questions are how life emerged and
what is life. The latter question is more philosophical than scientific: a philosopher’s job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing,
declared Bertrand Russell (1972) – and with neither observation nor mathematical
insight one cannot get very far. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922) was wise at this point,
observing that the solution of the problem of life is evident at the disappearance of
this problem.
In a pioneering study of this hard problem, Alexander Oparin (1924) listed
metabolism, self-reproductivity, and mutability as defining properties of life. What
is sufficient – any of these or all of them? A virus replicates but needs the facilities
of an infected organism or cell to do so, and it lacks self-sustained metabolism. Is
it alive? Some answer “yes” and some “no”. A computer program (or a computer
virus) replicates – is it alive? Hardly. A robot can manufacture other robots. Even
a book replicates in some way but, not unlike a virus, it needs a printer. All of the
above are mutable, even a book. A fellow philosophical question is: what is consciousness? As it goes with all philosophical questions, they can be and have been
discussed for centuries. It was easier once when everything could at the end of the
day be attributed to God. There are grey border areas between the black and the
white, but our intuition tells us what is certainly alive or aware of itself and what is
certainly not.
Traditional notions of the origin of life were rather contradictory. On the one
hand, everything was stated clearly: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass,
etc., and two days latter God created great whales, and every living creature that
moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every
winged fowl after his kind, and God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind,
and finally, before retiring for a good rest on the Sabbath, God created man in his
43
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
L. Pismen, Morphogenesis Deconstructed, The Frontiers Collection,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36814-2_4