Hi Lonnie, I thank you for your interest, and by way of doing so, I would like to respond within the content of your email, in brackets, as best I can:
Lately I have marveled at how many things you have mentioned that (surprisingly) bring grounded evidence of unusual assumptions I am currently looking into. I see Margulis mentioned, and Bohr, and endosymbiosis, and Penrose, and an open-mindedness to the idea that consciousness is not a rare phenomenon that
[Lynn Margulis was a Professor of mine at Boston University as an undergrad. As for your comment about being open-minded about consciousness, it is one of many concepts in biology that has been made transparent by seeing evolution from its origins instead of its results, as is conventionally done, even though we all acknowledge that reasoning after the fact is illogical; beyond that, the interrelationships between the various tissues and organs at the cellular-molecular level led me to consider the likelihood that consciousness-mind is part and parcel of overall physiology holistically.....that and the process of endosymbiosis, a popular concept in evolution theory that was never integrated with physiology in the way that I have been able to based on developmental principles of cell-cell signaling]
arises in some magical combination of biological pieces (yay!). I am so happy to see these, and the niche construction makes very good sense, especially the idea of a non-random genesis of an internal hodology that increases the odds of biological extension for the complex. That works even for socially constrained psychological hodologies (Kurt Lewin).
[It is heartening that you 'get' the relevance of Niche Construction in the context of the cell-cell communication context. When I first came across the concept of Niche Construction it seemed superficial and trivial, but then when I thought of it in the context of cellular communication mechanisms, and the possibility that the origins of Niche Construction were in the endogenization process made it highly relevant, at least to me. Are you familiar with Nicholas Christakis's 'contagion' theory (Jordan JJ, Rand DG, Arbesman S, Fowler JH, Christakis NA. Contagion of Cooperation in Static and Fluid Social Networks. PLoS One. 2013 Jun 19;8(6):e66199.)? I assume that it is the human homologue of Niche Construction, and if so, it would form the basis for understanding ecosystems at their fundament mechanistically instead of descriptively, offering opportunity for interesting hypothesis testing science....bridging the historic gap between evolutionary biology and Ecology]
What better to affect than what cannot get away? It is the origin of domestication, perhaps, in the structure and functional behavior of a cell. It is like a superstitious favor for an overarching fear of systemic collapse (Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior helps here, I feel), and in time, the phenomenal struggle becomes mistaken for the physical struggle.
[I find your comments here of great interest, but I am not familiar with concepts of domestication other than the recently discovered role of oxytocin in domestication biochemically/molecularly. And I am also not familiar with Skinner's work on Verbal Behavior......I know that a lot of value is placed on the role of language in human evolution, but I cannot help but think that that is the net result of cell-cell communication going all the way back to the origins of multicellular organisms.....and beyond. So perhaps you could help me in that regard?]
May I ask some beginning questions? How do you frame the idea of cellular protagonism? Do you think of a cell as having a lasting mental agency? I sat in on a cell biology class and what I came away with was really a mathematical lemma. What is the membrane? What is its endoplasm and why does it conceive itself in conflict and in need of adaptation? Which aspect of a prokaryotic or eukaryotic cell do you consider the centroid of its urgency to survive? I noticed you do share that mitochondria are likely parasitical yet partially commensal (almost a saltational evolution, which Margulis speaks of). And one can guess that if mitochondria signal perfuse cell death, they must not share a stake in the survival of the cell (or the diverse complex which we see organismically, since to issue or obey a superior order like that requires detachment from the organic complex). Instead, mitochondria seem to occupy a hierarchical or systemic maintenance role at the expense of their neighbors, and find extension in that (like many parasitical concerns, especially amensal symbionts and social roles such as villeins and tax collectors across history, and capos in Frankl’s search for meaning).
[So my reply here requires that I get up on my soap box both to hold forth and also to look back to the origins of life, as best we can figure based on experimental evidence. The data from the origins of life literature indicate that the oceans were formed by snowball-like asteroids that also contained polycyclic hydrocarbons (lipid, fat). When lipids are suspended in water they spontaneously form micelles or protocells, which may have been the first cells on earth. Moreover, when such protocells were warmed by the Sun, and then cooled at night they were able to maintain their form because lipids exhibit hysteresis, or 'molecular memory'. I think that was the origin of the memory needed for evolution.....the nucleotides (DNA, RNA) came later. More to the point, by forming such structures the protocells generated a molecular 'ambiguity' by partitioning the negative entropy (free energy) within the protocell (based on Schrodinger, What is Life?) from the external positive entropy in the environment. If you now were to ask how and why that occurred, my current thinking is that it is due to the Singularity of the Big Bang.....how so you might ask. Life is conventionally described as self-referential and self-organizing. The genesis of those characteristics is due to the recoil of the Big Bang, every action having an equal and opposite reaction (Newton's 3rd Law of Motion), the 'reaction' being the self-referential self-organizational characteristics of life forms, which must circumvent the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, existing far from equilibrium, unlike non-living things. That self-referential self-organized system is characterized by negative entropy, 'fueled' by the bioenergy generated by chemiosmosis, and monitored/controlled by homeostasis, or what I have termed The First Principles of Physiology. That construct facilitates the ability of living organisms to collect epigenetic 'marks' from their environment, informing the organism of changes in its surroundings, and passing those epigenetic marks to its progeny in order to adapt.....that is very different from Darwinian evolution, which as you know is all about the parents selecting one another and reproducing, which is the description of what actually transpires at a cell-molecular level beyond sight. So there is the idea of the cellular protagonist, acting as an active agent for collecting information in order for the organism to either change or remain at equipoise. And yes, the cell is conscious, the level of which is a function of its needs within its niche, but is always acting as an agent in service to the survival of the organism. I hope that my scenario answered your questions about the membrane and endoplasm, and why the cell conceives of itself in 'conflict' with the environment, which is always in flux. As to what is the 'centroid' of the urge to survive, I think its the homeostastic principle, which btw is homologous with the relationship between the electron and the proton in an atom- its that fundamental. As for the homology between mitochondria and bacteria, my guess is that there was a symbiotic relationship between the bacterium and the eukaryote that over the course of time became the mitochondrion through replacement of the bacterial metabolic contribution by enzymes proprietary to the host. This is like Norman Horowitz's explanation for metabolic evolution (Horowitz NH. On the
Evolution of Biochemical Syntheses. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1945
Jun;31(6):153-7.). Maybe you could elaborate on the homology/analogy with social systems?]
In set theory, something that puzzles me is “the manifold” (and it is so much like a cellular membrane in a living system). When we see something as a closed set, we must determine what circumscribes it; but whatever circumscribes it must differ from what circumscription yields to our understanding. So, the Order (and its appreciable variability as some coefficient of its uniform invariability) we see as separate from the “conscious” (conatus-like?) energy of the system – we seem to ignore the living aspect of a manifold or a containing membrane for its own sake (this course was at Adelaide, online). Nature does not create (non-living) structure, apparently, and one can as easily see the membrane as the protagonist rather than the unconscious skin of that urgent agency... while an eerie and ardent localizability drive seems to mandate a separation of “anatomy” from “physiology”, or organ membrane from organ contents/function.
[I haven't dealt with Set Theory since high school/college, so you'll have to help me with this aspect. When I have explained by 'theory of everything' in the past the mathematicians have universally alluded to it, so there is resonance there, but I cannot appreciate it....yet. I do think that the membrane is the 'protagonist' in the scenario of life because it partitions life from non-life, and we wrote a whole book on the concept of the cell membrane as the 'author' of all physiologic traits (see attached). I don't know if that rebuts your comments about anatomy/physiology or organ membrane/organ contents/function or not?]
Cell biologists explain that the membrane is not here for the endoplasm, its Golgi apparatus, reticulum, or any other systemically viewed sub-object. The idea of a constant membrane or manifold or container or axis of change, then, detracts from the complete idea of the systemic urgency which variability is irreducible to any anatomy, and brings us an estranged dichotomy… made of part-wise perspectives and their enduring agent (meta-perspective) - to explain the belief in an irreducible invariance and inseparability while witnessing continuing variability and separability of expression. Darwin called it "an insensible series..." such that no two observations are quite identical, so we reduce them to a species-like or variety-like similitude to avoid the impinging discomfiture of continuing differences.
[This is a seemingly 'heavy' question if I am reading it correctly. I have come to the conclusion that the dualities and dichotomies that were generated by the explosive disruption of the Big Bang are resolved by balanced chemical reactions and by life forms. Because life originates in ambiguity, it can resolve dualities and dichotomies by internalizing them and generating energy from matter......is that what you are alluding to? If not, please help me to understand what you are driving at]
Thank you for your time and help John!
[And thank you Lonnie for your interest and questions]