New physics-based theory says emergence of life was unavoidable

[haidut]

Very much in line with Ray's and Pollack's ideas. I wonder whether that guy also has some ideas on the emergence of consciousness as a physical property of matter as well...

http://www.businessinsider.com/groundbr ... in-2014-12

"...Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life."

 

[jaa]

Here's a Scientific American article on the same guy and his theory.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... y-of-life/

I like it. It seems like the origins of life have to look something like this. Any theory that involves processes completely novel to anything we've observed so far is difficult to digest.

I wonder whether that guy also has some ideas on the emergence of consciousness as a physical property of matter as well...

What else could it be?

 

[haidut]

Here's a Scientific American article on the same guy and his theory.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... y-of-life/

I like it. It seems like the origins of life have to look something like this. Any theory that involves processes completely novel to anything we've observed so far is difficult to digest.

I wonder whether that guy also has some ideas on the emergence of consciousness as a physical property of matter as well...

What else could it be?

I know, right? But sadly, if you ask most neuroscientists they will tell you that consciousness is either an illusion or unexplainable, dualistic phenomenon.

 

[bradley]

Ray spoke about this at length in our interview. So great to see it hit the scientific mainstream.

Haidut, Nagel talks about the mergence of consciousness in a somewhat related way.

 

[haidut]

Update to the article originally published in 2014. Quote from the latest addition to the news article:
"...Besides self-replication, greater structural organization is another means by which strongly driven systems ramp up their ability to dissipate energy. A plant, for example, is much better at capturing and routing solar energy through itself than an unstructured heap of carbon atoms. Thus, England argues that under certain conditions, matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process,” he said. Condensation, wind and viscous drag are the relevant processes in these particular cases. “He is making me think that the distinction between living and nonliving matter is not sharp,” said Carl Franck, a biological physicist at Cornell University, in an email. “I’m particularly impressed by this notion when one considers systems as small as chemical circuits involving a few biomolecules.”

"...Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied."