On Jul 16, 2018, at 8:01 AM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Hi Joe, I haven't read The Singular Universe, but have read Smolin's book The Life of the Cosmos, in which he uses Darwinian evolution theory to explain Black Holes and other Cosmologic phenomena. I found that quite remarkable both because we Biologists haven't been able to explain the mechanisms of biology using Darwinian evolution, and because Smolin is merging the animate and inanimate into one. Oh, and btw, are you familiar with the 'dust up' between Einstein and Bergson circa 1922, Einstein insisting that time isn't real, Bergson stipulating that time is essential to understanding physiology? At any rate, my 'aha' moment occurred when I realized that time is an artifact of descriptive biology. That is to say, in the emerging discipline of epigenetic inheritance, previously known as Lamarckian, the organism is an agent for collecting epigenetic data, which it carries back to its germ cells- egg and sperm- modifying them 'epigenetically' by changing the way in which DNA is translated into RNA and protein, beginning with the zygote, or fertilized egg, the embryo, the offspring, the life cycle, and back again to the zygote. In other words, it is the unicellular state that is being selected for, which is striving to maintain its identity in an ever-changing environment by modifying its offspring to interface with the environment in order to collect epigenetic 'data' to inform the unicellular state of the organism. It's what is called the Red Queen phenomenon, like the character in Alice in Wonderland who is 'running as fast as she can to remain in place'. This perspective on the biologic imperative as 'stasis' is counterintuitive, yet once it is realized it explains why it is that we must return to the unicellular state over the course of the life cycle, for example. Mechanistically, the cell cytoskeleton exists in three discrete states- homeostatic, mitotic and meiotic. Those states are determined by a specific gene, Target of Rapamycin, which is interconnected with all of the structures and functions of the cell, controlling which state the cell exists in. Seen in this way, time is an artifact in biology, as it is in physics, both of which are striving to attain the Singularity that existed prior to the Big Bang. Biology recapitulates its 'Big Bang' from one life cycle to the next; physics does so through the expansion and contraction of the Universe.Just as a reality check, the same thing occurs in a bee hive, the queen bee maintaining the genetic and epigenetic 'history' of the colony, the sterile drones flying off daily to nominally collect pollen to make honey, all the while providing epigenetic data to the queen in the process; at some point in that cycle the hive will eventually 'collapse', the queen flying off with the epigenetic data from the current environment to recreate the hive elsewhere. There are other well-known examples like the slime mold Dictyostellium switching between the amoeboid and colonial forms depending on how much food is available, and Turitopsis dorneii, the so-called 'immortal' jellyfish, thought to be death-less because under stress it reverts to its adolescent form, as if it had found the 'fountain of youth' NOT. In reality it's just figured out a way to collect epigenetic information by changing forms, but the underlying principle of interacting with the environment to obtain epigenetic data is a constant in all of these conditions. We do the same, chucking our bodies at the time of death, but our microbiomes (the bacteria that represent 70-90% of our bodies), which is informed through epigenetics over the course of our lifetimes, lives on! It's been documented as the 'necrobiome', which goes back into the soil (unless we are cremated or put into a concrete bunker), back into the water supply where it can be assimilated by the flora, eaten by the fauna, and re-constituted. The microbiome of the mother is located in the uterus, where the child will ingest it when it exits via the birth canal at the time of birth!Aha moment indeed! I think that if we were to understand the actual mechanisms of biology we would be less anxious about our lives, being able to put things into perspective....just sayin'. John############################On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 5:58 AM, Joseph Michalski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:############################Dear Colleagues:
I understand everyone has busy intellectual agendas, but I thought I'd share an interesting parallel discovery from the past weekend (beyond the recent discovery of neutrinos from a distant galaxy!). My wife and I were flying back from England, reading next to each other on the plane. I was reading Roberto Unger and Lee Smolin's The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time as part of my efforts to understand the cosmos and our broader TOK mission. My wife, who's a Sufi Muslim, was reading Sadegh Angha's (41st Sufi Master) The Hidden Angles of Life in her efforts to understand the cosmos from a religious worldview. Here's what we were reading at the same time from our respective books:
Joe, the scientist, read on p. 8: “If, however, everything is time-bound (a key argument of the book), that principle must apply as well to the laws, symmetries, and constants of nature. There are then no timeless regularities capable of underwriting our causal judgments. Change changes. It is not just the phenomena that change; so do the regularities: the laws, symmetries, and supposed constants of nature.”
Farnaz, the spiritualist, read on p. xi: “(T)he laws of physics are fundamentally and essentially variable (for example, there is much evidence and documentation that most of the constant principles of nature and those influenced by gravity are in fact not constant). Existence itself is in motion.” (emphasis in the original)
Just some food for future thought. If I arrive at any great insights from all of this, I'll be happy to share. At the same time, perhaps others on the list have had their own "a-ha" moments in terms of understanding the evolving nature of the universe, the constancy of change, and the implications that nature's laws might best be viewed from a cosmological, historical perspective. Yours kindly, -Joe
Dr. Joseph H. Michalski
Associate Academic Dean
King’s University College at Western University
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 2M3
Tel: (519) 433-3491, ext. 4439
Fax: (519) 433-0353
Email: [log in to unmask]
______________________
eiπ + 1 = 0
To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:TOK-SOCIETY-L-SIGNOFF-
[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A= 1 To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1