On the origin and nature of life on planet Earth

ON THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE ON PLANET EARTH
A Conjecture in Search of Experimental Assessment

Dov Henis, Ph.D.
henisdov@netvision.net.il
Telephone and fax 972 9 748 6187
P.O. Box 1052
45110 Hod-Hasharon
Israel

Posted on Heraclitean Biology Group web site June 27, 1999
Copyright 1999 by Dov Henis

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All suggestions of the origin and nature of life on Earth may only be conjectural, until proven.The various versions may appeal or entertain or offend, depending on the educational background of the reader. You may find this version fraught with insights, with answers to yet unanswered questions and with directions for future studies and work IF, if like the boy in The Emperor's New Clothes, you call what you see; if you call cellular life INTELLIGENT rather than A Homeostatic System. And if you do find this version even remotely plausible I hope you feel personally moved and eager to contribute idea(s) to an outline of an experimental program to scientifically assess the basic conjecture presented here.

1. Each and every living cell on Earth is inhabited by live beings. Some of the cells cluster to live in the form of polycell life forms.

2. Life on Earth started soon after its surface formed. It either started on Earth or arrived here, in the forms of beings either pre-celled or celled, or evolved here into celled forms. Since their initial colonization of Earth the in-cell beings have been evolving and forming the multitudes of polycellular, cluster-of-cells, life forms inhabiting Earth today.

3. The basic nature of life is common to cells that exist singly, to mercells ( constituent cells of polycells ) and to polycell life forms regardless of overall size and degree of complexity. The answer to " what makes a polycell life-form a LIFE " is the answer to " what makes some of the inhabitants of a cell live BEINGS ", and vice versa.

4. The base forms of these Earthly in-cell four-billion-years-old beings are polynucleotides (PNs) of a modular construction. These are active purposeful beings, parallel to our conception of "intelligent purposeful beings". They are of an Earth civilization circa 100 times older than ours by our definition of time, the civilization of the formers of all forms of life on Earth including human's.

5. The genesis of PNs was most probably the energetically directed formation of strands, followed by coupling into primordial paired DNA ladder. This was most probably the "material seed" of life.

6. Earth is the universe of its PNs. The base space and time units of their universe, their parallels of our millimeter and second, are probably about 10 to the minus 14th of ours. A lapse of our one second is for them equivalent to a lapse of one year to us ( 3.15 X 10 to the 7 seconds ).

7. In each single cell or a mercell of a polycell there is, in human terms, an organized purposeful hierarchical chain of monitoring and control and task/work organisation for both in- and out-of-cell tasks. We do not yet know enough or able to discern a cell's " masterentity". It is plausible that in polycell life form this entity may be discerned first in its stem cells. The purposeful PNs continuously evolve and make more efficient the configurations of themselves and of their "functional tools", to improve the capability of their survival, procreation and propagation. There are at least as many varieties of PNs as there are forms of life on Earth, many more than polycell life forms, as we are familiar with very few of the single-cell life forms on Earth. The "intelligence" of the alive PNs consists, like that of ours and like that of other polycell systems, of a compounded array comprising interaction of several chemicals and relays of energy pulses. In all cases this compounded array is "impressed" by a phenomenon, passes the impression to "someonething" , followed by "purposeful" instruction(s) of the someonething what and how to carry out.

8. Cells are the space-ships of the PNs that inhabit them. The clusters-of-cells, the many Earth's polycell life forms, are the PNs space stations. Types of cells, nucleated and non-nucleated, exist in a great variety of compositions, each developed and maintained by colonies of a specific PN type, with functional organization comprising central awareness of surroundings, their assessment, and reactions to them with a variety of specialized task-dedicated tools some of which are "forms of beings". Many of the space-ships-cells are self-sufficient in suitable environs while others are jointly or symbiotically cooperative with and interdependent on their kin or other space-ships-cells. Most space-ships-cells comprise their energy, chemical and other plants and their scouts and communication and defense and repair crews etc.,. The interdependent types not only congregate in space-stations-polycell-life forms but also develop and form and maintain the environs enveloping the space-ships making up the space-station. Some of the space-ships-cells depend for survival and propagation on attacking and exploiting or devouring other cells or their environs.

9. Earth's polycell life forms are the PNs' space stations that, in our terms, were formed and programmed by their base PNs to reflect-react to materials and circumstances and phenomena and to continuous self-programmed-improving for continuous preservation and procreation of the space-stations, for the continuous preservation and procreation of the base PNs that reside in the mercells of the polycell life form.

10. The human terms and connotations used here re the PNs are, of course, of a human civilization. The PNs and their predecessors have come into being and developed their capabilities when our universe was younger, of smaller volume, of a higher energy density and of a different material content than at present. The essence of their biological drive and goal is neatly and solely to survive and proliferate. This drive and goal are thus the base essence of all Earth's life forms. It is instilled in each and every life form on Earth as these are simply the mono- or polycell colonies of the PNs. When the survival or proliferation of cells is endangered this information reaches the in-cell " masterentity " and it institutes process(es) of mutation(s), based on their billions-of-years (in our terms) experience that mutated version(s) may survive. The PNs technical capabilities are, for their needs and purpose, much superior to ours as evident in the various forms of their energy exploitation and chemical transformations and construction processes.

11. The biological drive of single and of mercells is neatly to survive and proliferate. Base existence, survival, procreation and propagation are the essence, target and and sole activities of the PNs, instilled also in their polycell life forms. We are not yet capable of discerning if they have developed also "cultural entities", activities of secondary contribution to capacities of survival and proliferation. It is plausible, though, that by experience of billions of years any "secondary" trait is less efficient in terms of the essential trait and thus superflous.

12. All individual and group behavioral aspects of each and all Earth's life forms, of all the PNs space-stations, derive from the PNs biological drive and are shaped and directed by it or somehow serve it. These aspects include all civilizations including human's and all the forms of "culture", which in the case of humans are subjective virtual entities evolved, developed and of meaning and relevance to humans only.

13. The biological drive of PN is most probably similar to a "direction of chemical reaction", directed or drawn by energy balance. The prompter and initiator and mover of life is ENERGY. Life is in essence mechanism(s) prompted and initiated by energy, to draw energy from the universal pool of energy ( in a sense the weight of the universe ), to enhance it and to store it in various forms and to utilize it in several ways for repeating this process over and over.

14. The dimensions, configurations and compositions of the PNs and of their various task-dedicated crews and of their environs raise wonders such as the relationships between the PNs and surrounding molecules and ions considering their relative sizes and the forces acting on and between them. Also whereas Earth is the PNs' universe their this universe may be a level up above another, quantum universe.

15. Human's uniqueness on Earth was initiated by a stimulus in a section of the brain of one or some of them as they were faced by new demands for new manipulations and for new analyzing and assessing of new vistas open to them upon changing posture to stay erect on two feet. The new demands employed existing brain cells in one side of the brain, overtaxed their capabilities and led to compensation by overworking symmetrically located cells in the other half of the split brain and this in turn led again to compensation in the first half and thus contralaterallization evolved and is still evolving now.

16. Present knowledge does not enable discerning the characteristics that render a specific polynucleotide entity in a mono- or mercell a "controller" or more of a "being" than other functional entities evolved by them and functioning for them. It may turn out that some functional entities are also live "extensions or beings" evolved and controled by the cell " controlentity ".

17. This conjectural picture raises also reflections about the simplistic notions we humans have re communication with "aliens". PNs' communications are based on "chemilanguage", on use of chemicals, whereas our communications derive from the PNs' and is based on it but is also superimposed on it, in a relationship like between our own inetrcommunicating equipments to our basic speech. Would we ever be able to "communicate" even with our own PN ? Would we ever be able to more than learn and follow their constitutions and manifestations of their activities and exploit these findings for our own purposes ? Is not communication with our own PN an on-hand available target and challenge and opportunity to develop communications with "aliens" ? Does our capability to conceive of "aliens" suffice for arriving at such a communication or must both "parties" be capable of "conceiving" to enable communication ? and is "conceiving" a unique virtual human aspect ?

18. Humans have just evolved into the universe. We are not yet able to understand and explain the origin and nature of life on Earth in acceptable human scientific terms. If this universe is finite humans may eventually arrive at a Final Theory that will include understanding of life. Eventually. Until then we can only progress towards further understanding. Meanwhile a plausible version may hopefully place us at a new crossroad closer to a better insight. We do not yet know if the Earthly PNs are the only compositions/configurations organized into life in the universe. It seems, though, that the origin and drive of life is energy and as material is a form of energy then life is a manifestation or revelation of energy. This opens the awful question " what is energy ", reminding us that as far back and as deep down we learn to observe and as much as we think we comprehend , the Unknown is still there infinitely ahead of us.

( First draft July 5 1997, with additions/modifications March-June 1999 ).

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