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Living organisms are not structures. Not sure if that's what you say, but I have heard this many times, in the context of origin of life. Where life is seen as
by cristianpascu 13y ago
Living organisms are not structures. Not sure if that's what you say, but I have heard this many times, in the context of origin of life. Where life is seen as self-replicating structures.
The complexity of a geometrical structure (like a cube, or a protein) is one thing. The complexity of a process that fulfills a function (engine of a car) is another thing. One is static, the other is dynamic. One just sits there. Like a pile of rocks. The other one takes an input and process it into an output, in a specified, repeatable manner.
A pile of rocks, in a particular context, solves the problem of surviving the surrounding conditions. Is it the simplest solution? Who cares!
DNA replication on the other hand? What did Mother Nature drink to come up with this problem and try to solve it?
- agumonkey 13y agoThat's why I added 'abstract' it's not fixed, things move underneath but the abstract properties remain. Funny about the rock thing, I never know what to make about them, I would need to add an 'adaptability' rule to my core ones. DNA replication did not emerge from the early organisms. Before replication, we could investigate about DNA or prototypical forms of DNA as forms of variable input transformation. This kind of meta-encoding (sorry programmer POV leaking) of input tranformation is probably not the first minimum but pressure + time pushed the versatility needs up (again programmer POV).
- cristianpascu 13y agoI'm a programmer too, but also a physicist, and it's also hard for me to read through explanations/narratives that use a lot of metaphorical language. And there's a lot of that in evolutionary narratives.