by John » Tue 29 Mar 2016 12:22 pm
My ideas on the 'Genesis of Evolution': i.e. why did evolution even start?
Like many others I feel that the progress of evolution has been too ordered, too logically progressive to have come about by the machinations of sheer unaided chance and that there may be some natural, however limited, guiding force at work. For clarity I should first say that I believe that nothing exists beyond what is natural and obeys natural law, whatever that may be, whilst freely accepting that much of the function of natural law is neither known nor properly understood at this time. That being so, I believe that we live in a Universe that may be guided by some natural force or intelligence.
It is my belief that all the ‘bits and pieces’ of matter, inorganic and organic, that comprise the Universe have come into being through the processes of naturally guided and inevitable evolution.
What has particularly intrigued me is that no-one seems to have given any thought as to the why(?) of evolution. For convenience only I will assume that the Universe had an initial state of being and that there were some initial chance ‘effects’ due to random activity between masses - gravity for one. If that (highly unlikely) scenario should be true, I have wondered what is it that subsequently caused unthinking matter to progressively interact and produce different materials, perhaps even forces, that themselves had either no previous existence or had existed in different states, yet later have acted together in complicated ways to eventually produce highly complex new material states? (I add here that I believe that the Universe is, in total,absolutely eternal and has no beginning nor end, but conclude that it periodically renews itself and therefore does, in that sense only, have beginnings. This is an idea not a fact!
It would seem that such an early Universe would have rapidly reached equilibrium - but obviously that did not happen. The production of complicated materials requires rather more than the occasional interaction of disparate masses of inorganic matter. So what changed? What ‘rather more’ allowed their formation by the otherwise blind force known as evolution?
Even after considerable ongoing research I can find no trace of any earlier work questioning the origins of the actual process, neither of evolutionary non-random selection nor of any suggested physical process that relates to the origin of its function. Nor has that evolutionary process, so very evident in biology, been linked to the similar, original parent process, that demonstrates so clearly that the inorganic world has itself experienced an amazingly similar evolution. I suggest in the following remarks my solution to this problem.
We know that in the case of organic evolution, pure chance has little or no role. Only the process known as non-random selection could and does, during simple but relatively complex selection routines produce even the simplest replicating life forms, let alone what we see today. But how did this come about? It seems far too convenient, far too unbelievable to accept that random accidental selection should somehow, by blind chance become complex. Far more likely that blind chance would remain blind, endlessly repeating itself and getting nowhere. Logically it would seem there must be some guiding process, however slight, that directs the selection and interaction of not just one but the several factors that inevitably stand a higher chance of resulting in an advanced state of matter: a process of non-random selection.
To control or direct this process there must, of necessity be a suitable structure, no matter how primitive initially, that has itself evolved during later interactions to some complexity. There is no apparent reason why this special ‘structure’ would pre-exist in matter as it would have no immediate function in that matter, so I believe that it must have come about during the interaction of two or more bodies that resulted in the formation of a new or changed material, thus creating the means to a chain of such events eventually resulting in the world as it is now.
Any trace or resonance left in a sub-atomic structure by the interaction of two or more different states of matter surely must then leave some influence that reflects its origin, and in that reflection surely it would influence the course of future interactions. What other purpose could such a new, specific addition to the generic nature of the subject matter fulfill? There is almost invariably a logical explanation as to why an object retains such advanced capabilities.
Therefore, I suggest it is reasonable to expect that this origin, itself a new part of sub-atomic structure, would contain, at the very least, some limited ‘instructions’ affecting the re-organisation and selection of matter when interacting with other materials. At some later stage in history most materials would by then already contain similar sub-atomic instructions guiding the way in ever more complex interactions. These ‘instructions’, slightly modified by these continuing interactions would be passed on, so becoming integral to a newly formed structure, in a parent and child manner, as is the case in organic evolution.
I think a later evolved and ‘improved’ form of this inorganic evolutionary process might well be a more likely mechanism for explaining the currently mysterious, seemingly near impossible production of some of the more ‘difficult’ heavier elements or materials than the fanciful explanations currently attributed to the poorly understood internal workings of Stars, imaginary Black Holes or ‘colliding’ Galaxies!
To emphasise my point, it would seem therefore inevitable that having regard to the unquestionably progressive nature of the history of physical evolution, that those tiny physical changes must fulfil some function - albeit blindly and unconsciously. So, I maintain that logically - and in the absence of any other known function attributable to such a change - it is most probably this function that is responsible for the biasing of events in an eventually progressive manner, discarding all the failures, and during a process of non-random evolution creating the complexity,first of the physical Universe then of the biological Universe.
To those like Richard Dawkins, who (despite his insight does not address my question as to the why of evolution) will not accept anything beyond unguided, totally blind chance as being the father of biological non-random selection, I ask these questions: Would even chance events leave no mark, no trace, no physical change in the structures of the elements involved? How likely is it that evolution itself, in its more complex non-random form, would occur entirely through purely chance events? Lastly: Would that trace have no effect at all on its actual behaviour?
To be fair, Dawkins’ quoted views relate only to biological evolution and he claims that purely chance events led eventually to non-random selection. He relies for this entirely on blind chance having, very, very gradually, higgledy-piggledy, got luckier and luckier. Quite possibly my idea, though reasonable, is wrong, but ... pot luck?! Presumably he feels stuck with pure chance, never having considered the possibility of a more positive, natural solution.
Perhaps because of that he gives no consideration to inorganic evolution, apparently leaving the simple act of casual contact itself to act as the whole, purely accidental story here. Well, of course, it is automatic, but as every contact leaves a trace, which trace must itself have some bearing on later events, then frankly an explanation which ignores this scientific principle, seems inadequate. Like so many others, Dawkins flounders here.
On this point I further suggest that, quite unlike the Dawkins model, the biological evolutionary processes - if born of inorganic parents and not of magic - must carry the ‘genes’ of the parental evolution processes, so - never would they have been random - and always were, essentially, the non-random selection processes we see today. I believe that these newer, biological evolution processes themselves have since undergone a degree of ‘evolutionary’ change.
Clearly life is the child born at a peak of inorganic evolution, possibly linked to the reproductive mechanism seen in crystal formations. The line of functional inheritance is clearly marked by the numerous ways in which life mimics its inorganic parents in their long standing and well known 'lifelike' behaviours. In the interests of brevity I have restricted myself to the essential nuts and bolts of my idea having no doubt that the point will be clear to you. If at some time it transpires that this ‘suggestion’ is truly the case it will become even more apparent that there are almost aware and mechanically intelligent functions operating widely in the physical world, presently unknown in our formal understanding of physics, which is itself in need of considerable revision and a far more open and comprehensible aspect.
Sadly, there is as yet no way to test materials to verify any change from an original ‘pure’ state as obviously all materials will have experienced and absorbed such changes long ago. Nevertheless, at some point, with a new approach and open minds, it may well prove possible for scientists to identify and classify not only this particular property of matter but probably many other such presently unidentified properties for what they really are.