Denys writes:

> Finally, back home for a little bit with a few minutes to respond.
>
> I printed your response for reading on the plane.  I also visited the sites
> you mentioned.
>
> Now, your answer raises a few questions:
>
> You say that "... DNA-based life extends back at least as far 3.6 Ga, and
> may go to 3.8 Ga. This is the point in time at which the machinery of life
> that inhabits this planet was invented..."
>
> You did not explain how it was invented or by whom or what.

The use of the word "invention" was a metaphor on my part. I did not mean to
imply that there was an "inventor," only that the physics of the universe
apparently predestines the invention of life. It's easy to see how that could be
so. Once one self-replicating structure exists, in any form, no matter how
primitively it might initially be implemented, it will continue to self-replicate,
so long as resource material exists, and evolve into ever more reliable and
robust constructs.


>  Next you state: "... but then becoming obligate symbionts and eventually so
>  well integrated into the working of the protoeukaryotic cells that they
>  became organelles. This evolution took an additional 2 Ga, and we have no
>  idea why it took so long.
>
>  The next great step required another 2 GA, occurring only 570 Ma ago, and
>  that was the evolution of task-partitioned, complex multicellularity. This
>  evolution was the "Cambrian Explosion" of animals, plants and fungi, and
>  again, we have no idea why it took so long..."
>
>  I hear what you are saying about "... why it took so long..."  But I would
>  like to ask, "why did it happen at all?  How did it happen?"

For most scientific disciplines, the "why?" question isn't allowed. It makes
no sense to ask "why is the rock sitting there?" or "why is our star 5500
degrees Kelvin?" and expect a purpose-driven answer. If people phrase the
question, using the word "why?," it was only colloquial speech. What they really meant
was "how did the rock come to be sitting there?" But the "how?" question is
fundamentally different than a "why?" question. It can be answered. A
mechanical answer is now expected, and we've gotten very good at deducing mechanism.

But biology is different kind of science. The "why?" question can not only be
asked, I consider it essential that it be asked. Purposivity permeates
biological structures. Ernst Mayr, who just died a few weeks ago, and who was often
regarded as the Charles Darwin of the 20th Century, wrote that the most
important questions in biology are the "why?" questions.

"Teleology" literally means the study of ends or distant purposes. To the
medieval church, it meant seeking out God's purposes in the universe we see
around us, and for that reason teleological explanations are still often deprecated
in deprecated. Indeed, at the beginning of the last century, biology students
were not allowed to say that the turtle came ashore *to* lay her eggs. They
could only make the observational statement, the turtle came ashore *and* laid
her eggs, without imputing any motive or purposivity to her actions.

But purposivity clearly exists in biological structures. An eye or a wing
clearly have a reason of being. By mid-century, JBS Haldane quipped that
"teleology is like a mistress to a biologist. He can't afford to be seen with her in
public, but he can't live without her either."

To that end, by the 1970's, Colin Pittendridge coined the term, "teleonomy",
the "naming of purposes or ends", to draw as sharp as distinction between
teleology and teleonomy as there is between astronomy and astrology, while at the
same time attempting to reinvigorate the discussion of purposivity in biology.
Mayr almost immediately added the term "teleomaty," to emphasize the obvious
fact that there exists a clearly evident self-organization to the universe.
Giant, billowing clouds of interstellar hydrogen and helium will self-collapse
and ignite into stars, that planets will form from the heavier dust remants of
that collapse, and that certain chemical compounds will spontaneously form in
great abundance. Teleomatic processes are processes that generate their end
states automatically, so that galaxies, stars, planets, oceans, and complex
molecular structures spontaneously fall out of the stuff of the Big Bang and the
physics of the universe in which we find ourselves.

Every star and every galaxy is a replicate of the universal teleomatic
processes that appear ubiquitous in our universe, and we are overwhelmed with
replicates. Each galaxy has about 100-400 billion stars in it, and we now estimate
that we can see one trillion galaxies. Although at the moment, we only know of
life on just one planet, we don't expect that life itself to be in any manner
unique. Life must be as common in the universe as are stars. Indeed, we now
expect to find life any where that warm mud can stably exist for a significant
period of time.

At the moment our best guess is that life is an imperative of the universe
that we live in. Its origin is wholly mechanical, a simple thermodynamic
consequence of the physicochemical rules of this universe. But it's important to note
that we don't know that for certain, any more than we knew that planets
existed around other suns prior to 1995. We were virtually certain that they were
there, but we didn't have a shred of proof that they actually existed. Now, due
to nothing more complex than refinements in technology, we have discovered136
extrasolar planets, and just in the last month, we've actually been able to
see the reflected light from one of them.

Our knowledge of life elsewhere in the universe is in a similar state at the
moment. We have absolutely no evidence that life exists anywhere but earth,
but neither will anyone be surprised once we find it. If we properly understand
the rules of the universe, life appears inevitable, given the right conditions.

Wirt Atmar

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