Intricately Operating, Self-Replicating Systems Merit Designation as Intelligent Products, and Not Just as Machines

ABSTRACT: Acutely interactive with the environment, with numerous types and innumerable lines of development found rampant throughout it, the preponderance of life on this planet begs one very important question: Are new forms of life still being developed on Earth? The answer merits direct observation before explanation, and a new perspective in terms of the source/origins of life, i.e., one that posits production as origin. Direct observation is a matter of great importance in this area, and a scientific issue that won't go away easily, whatever the scholarly pale or excuse.

Self-replicating systems using input-output control for environmental interaction merit a classification not only as life, but as intelligent products, too. At least, taken from a systems perspective, they deserve more than consideration as machines or even intelligent machines. Given the magnificent fact that they replicate themselves in assembly-line fashion from same-kind objects/elements, a feat that only computer viruses can mimic in terms of human actions, they are a supreme novelty and perhaps, the very pinnacle expression of nature. They surpass the capabilities of human product conception and design. Say again? Organisms developed simply through the process of long-term environmental accretion?

The environmental situation at the time of origin of life on Earth is generally believed to have been dramatically different than it is now--almost conveniently so. If scientists are no longer able to directly observe the process of life being generated on this planet directly due to the fact that it no longer appears in the field, then it is this absence of recurring new life that becomes most conspicuous. It turns the discussion into a tattle-tail critique on what could be a hypocritical grasp at straws for answers in science. If not such a scientific excuse over the absence of data, it might instead be an actual sign of data: a radical change in what then would become Mother Earth's maturing unilinear processes governing the progression and development of planetary life. Either explanation would constitute a noteworthy point, a historical landmark along the sign trail of origins studies.

There are some pitfalls that come with trying to answer these questions, however. One is that it might expose some shoddy science. Origins scientists are typically defensive from being cornered by religious people, historically conditioned into a posture in public of not countenancing doubt that evolutionary theory might be wrong, underdeveloped or inadequate. However, there are still some legitimate concerns, and these are based on the real world, not any religious text. Assuming that the environment has changed from an original life-initiating state without in-depth data being supplied in support could ostensibly conceal an absence of observational data which never existed. It would also then appear to be part of a rather over-zealous public-relations approach generally employed to obscure the absence of observational data for drawing valid scientific conclusions. Taken as the latter, it would constitute a propagandist ploy used in evolutionary circles to obfuscate the general need for confirmational observations, for example, replacing data with mere public-relations driven spectacles such as convincing petri dish lab exercises made in conjunction with armchair-driven news releases. The latter is the same basic grandstanding approach allegedly used by the Discovery Institute, one that enrages evolutionists, eliciting unmistakable consternation and chronic lament in them.

Discovering ultimate origins or first cause may an unreasonable goal for all but the most doctrinaire and fanatic of scientists. It is much like the attempt to peer at God--a feat well beyond our technological reach (sic). It is in some ways like the our pursuit of conditions before the Big Bang: unattainable to all soul searchers other than the mathematician and cosmologist. That is to say, true origin circumstances may be out of the reach of science without employing the tools that can be used to replace direct observation (for instance, a huge telescope conveniently positioned in space to look back in time). I believe that explanations of the origin of organisms deserve more attention and rigor than the use of anecdotal explanations taken from myth, armchair considerations, vaguely reported survival considerations, or extrapolation taken from organ and structural artifacts alone. What we cannot scientifically observe, we can only theoretically hypothesize. Nothing can justify an argument taken from the point of view of ignorance, or its corollary, the inability to observe pertinent data. Thus conclusive answers are not to be found primarily at the prehistoric extremities of science, where there is by necessity a lowered standard for direct observation and evidence, due to the erosion of data currently inaccessible to instrumental science. Our current unwillingness to peer at the possible origins of new life nowadays is no excuse to project theory into the past as fact in areas where there is an acute lack of willingness to obtain data on what obviously was (and must still be) a replete, recurring natural phenomena, the continued genesis of life on Earth.

I believe this regretful state of ignorance can be resolved by real world data and observation. If the concept of species is taken to be analogous to product/produced lines and not just morphological and its particulate sources, our perspective on origins could change to a more current and functionally based one. Reverse-engineering functional analyses of present-day changes in DNA and genes would then serve as the front-line tier for explanation for organisms' past origins! In fact, species' functions and operations and their development then would be tantamount to an understanding of origins, not a mere sequential outline of the appearance of structures in the fossil record. Indeed, taking a functional view of features means that production is in fact origin, and traces of functions become an operational record of a species's actual history. This would effectively become its track record, the developmental history of a species. Unless we can find the actual production lines and fixtures that constitute the building-blocks to create new life, organs, and functions, all which should be occurring still nowadays (If not, why not?), we cannot understand life's origins in this more systems-oriented, wholistic sense. Understanding how labels are stuck on to animals' skins on the outside (classification by morphology) and visualizing the lumbering amoeba of evolution (genetic variation coupled with natural selection) on a chart are not enough.

In a nutshell, it may well all boil down to this: evolution reduces down to the gene pool of numbers; and NID--to testable ideals, but ideals nonetheless.