Nowhere357

Abiogenesis is the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter. (Merriam-Webster.)

Nowhere357

Correct. I think all our physical knowledge presumes life, then we claim that physical knowledge will one day explain life. This seems like begging the question to me.

Wounded King

In what way do Newtons laws of motion "assume life"?

Nowhere357

I think we're crossing points again.

First, I reject the charge of teleology. I have no interest in god, or in intelligent design. Both ideas as such have no weight with me. They make no sense. My approach is unsophisticated (for which I offer no apology), but it is based on observation and honest inquiry.

Next, I don't think it's controversial to suggest that life arises from matter, given the right conditions. It is not the case that some carbon atoms will perform as expected, while others will not. IMO any planet that develops similar enough to earth can be expected to have life.

As I explore the question of life, I believe I have begun to uncover an important concept. This thread is an attempt to explore that concept, from a different direction.

I had asked :"It looks to me as if life adds order and compexity to a system. Why is that not seen as a force or energy?"

From you POV, please try to answer?

Nowhere357

They don't. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

The laws of physics do not indicate life. The sciences which do study life - biology, psychology - presume the existence of life. The laws and rules of biology etc cannot be derived from the physical laws. IOW life seems to be a fundamental property. One for which no prior cause is assigned - much like the existence of matter.

I asked : "It looks to me as if life adds order and compexity to a system. Why is that not seen as a force or energy?".

From your POV, please try to answer?

Nowhere357

Thank you for the clarification. I suppose that the tail also can be seen as a pre-tail, which developes into a tail (fish) or a no-tail (human).

Anyway I think this doesn't affect my point. Human embryonic development seems like strong visual evidence for evolution. IMO.

Darwin's Beagle

I am uncertain exactly what your position is. It is especially unclear exactly what you mean when you say th laws of nature do not indicate life. So before I can intelligibly respond here is what I think you are saying:

(1) You have no problem with evolutionary theory. Once life gets started everything else could have arisen by descent with modification. Natural selection and other neodarwinian mechanisms are sufficiently powerful to generate present-day diversity from a universal common ancestor.

(2) The origin of life, however, is another question. The laws of nature are such that without some type of directing intelligence life would never have begun in the first place.

Is this a correct assessment of what you are saying? If not please explain what is wrong.

Albion

Abiogenesis assumes e.t.? Could you clarify?

The Lone Ranger

I would guess he means that abiogenesis assumes the existence of evolutionary theory. That isn't really the case, however, since abiogenesis is a separate (though not unrelated) field.

One problem is the use of the word "assumes." Biology doesn't assume the existence of life, since the existence of life is an observed phenomenon. The science of biology would not exist if there were no living things to study.

100 years ago, there were no computers. Not coincidentally, there was no field called "Computer Science," either.

It's difficult to study things which don't exist. It's the business of science to study and explain things that do exist, or at least, we have good reason to suspect exist(ed).

Cheers,

Michael

Wounded King

Dear Nowhere,

You say

Alright, I accept that teleology was perhaps a bit extreme, perhaps progressionist would be a more reasonable term.

You go on to say

In your previous posts you seemed to be implying that matter had some sort of will or tendency to form life. Your new formulation is considerably more moderate, but highly speculative, until we can observe the other environments in which life has arisen, if any, we cannot really say anything meaningful about the frequency of abiogenetic events.

As to whether life adds order and complexity to a system, I would not say this was definitely the case overall. Obviously some of the actions of life can make a system more complex or ordered, although it is important to note that the two are not the same of course, there are also situations where life could lead to less complex or less ordered states in a system. You sound as if you are verging onto the fringes of information theory based approaches to a definition of life here.