Why does Life exist at all and what is its purpose or function in the Universe?
This is the deepest and most intractable existential question that continues to confront philosophers and scientists today.
The two most popular current explanations are unscientific, disingenuous and totally unsatisfactory in the 21st century.
The first alternative - Intelligent Design, suggests that a supernatural force or deity has specifically designed our universe to realise its own potential and that of its creation- life.
A common argument in support of this proposition suggests that the properties of the universe including its shape, size, age and physical laws must have been fine-tuned for life by an outside omnipotent entity, because the odds of such a combination occurring by chance alone are astronomically small.
This is a modern incarnation of the same discredited watchmaker design argument used by William Paley in the 18th century, in an attempt to disprove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
The second alternative is equally unsatisfactory, suggesting that chance alone has provided just the right Goldilocks combination of physical laws and constants in our world to generate the carbon-based molecular precursors of life; although conceding that evolution eventually takes control to finish the job.
This scenario has received support from the current Multiverse paradigm which proposes that our universe is just one of a very large or infinite number of distinct spatial volumes, each with its own set of characteristics and laws. It is therefore statistically possible that life arose in our universe and possibly others because of fortuitous chance alone.
Some theoretical support for this option is also provided by string theory, which confirms the possibility that a multiverse-type mathematical structure with an extremely large set of possible configurations is topologically feasible.
Nevertheless unquantifiable possibilities or mathematical feasibilities do not prove a real-world causal relationship.
Both these scenarios therefore fall far short of providing rigorous or even elementary evidence in attempting to answer this crucial question- how and why did the delicate and highly improbable combination of matter and forces essential for the creation of life came into existence in the first place.
However, a third pathway to the solution, which invokes evolutionary and information theory at a far deeper level, offers a more rational scientific explanation, without requiring the services of a either a deity or roulette wheel.
Part of the answer is connected to the revolutionary idea that cosmologist Lee Smolin introduced over a decade ago, which postulates that each generation of universes has the capacity to spawn child universes, each with slightly altered physical parameters in a mutated form of its parent. If these changes allow for small increases in inflation, this may kick-start larger universes that do not collapse as quickly as smaller ones and which will eventually have the capacity and longevity to create stars, planets, heavier elements such as carbon, complex organic molecules and eventually life in some form.
In other words, universes capable of generating life will be selected by the larger environment of a possible multiverse in the biological Darwinian sense, according to the rules of mutation, selection and replication.
It is now proposed by David Tow that this scenario could be combined with new information-based evolutionary theory, currently being developed by the Centre, to offer a third and more verifiable way of explaining life’s existence.
Since its genesis as single-cell organisms on earth nearly 4 billion years ago, life in its various forms has continued to evolve towards higher levels of genetic and neural complexity; expanding its capacity for more complex information processing, decision-making and knowledge aggregation. This has allowed it to continue to adapt and survive in a radically changing environment and according to David Tow implies the existence of a powerful secondary Darwinian evolutionary selection process at work.
New information and decision network evolutionary theory suggests the possibility that life is selected by the environment of the larger universe as an efficient form of information processor, with the capacity to progress towards higher levels of processing and intelligence, as predicted by stronger versions of the Anthropic principle. Such systems therefore have the requisite complexity and capacity to maximise the amount of information generated over the life of the universe. This is the key to the puzzle.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the symbiosis of human and computational intelligence has greatly amplified the level of information and knowledge generation and will continue to do so at an exponential rate. This ratcheting process will likely result, in the view of a number of philosophers and cosmologists, in the eventual emergence of a super- intelligent form of life and mind, expanding to become co-existent with the cosmos.
For example, eminent physicist Professor Frank Tipler in his ground-breaking book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, postulates that life could survive indefinitely in a re-collapsing universe undergoing an infinite number of chaotic space-time oscillations. This would occur if such super-intelligent life forms were able to send an infinite number of light rays back and forth between themselves in subjective time, processing an infinite amount of information. In other words, accelerate the rate of information processing faster than the approach of the final singularity or big crunch.
But regardless of such a final outcome, if life has been selected by the cosmic environment as a mechanism for generating an increasing amount of information, the capacity to manage entropy and energy resources within the universe would be more effectively achieved. Therefore by selecting those physical laws and states most likely to generate information – the cosmos has created the potential to extend its own as well as life’s survival.
This then would be the primary function and role of life in the universe.
As a corollary, life could equally be seen as selecting the living space most appropriate to its continued and enduring evolution. Biological processes might in fact be the means of selecting those laws of physics that best boost life’s own survival. The prerequisite conditions for such opportunistic systems will narrow down the range of possible structures to a tiny proportion of available chemical configurations, including those in which the laws of physics have a high probability of supporting life as we know it.
In addition, the primeval mythological notion of a god can be more precisely defined; in terms of a communal intelligence eventually pervading the universe- an infinitely complex network or system of systems connecting all life, with each node acting as a powerful information processor, but inseparable from the whole. The definition of a god within a scientific context therefore is transformed from a fuzzy anthropomorphism into an emergent and continuously unfolding phenomenon, leveraging to higher and higher levels of knowledge, wisdom and potentiality.
This is the deepest and most intractable existential question that continues to confront philosophers and scientists today.
The two most popular current explanations are unscientific, disingenuous and totally unsatisfactory in the 21st century.
The first alternative - Intelligent Design, suggests that a supernatural force or deity has specifically designed our universe to realise its own potential and that of its creation- life.
A common argument in support of this proposition suggests that the properties of the universe including its shape, size, age and physical laws must have been fine-tuned for life by an outside omnipotent entity, because the odds of such a combination occurring by chance alone are astronomically small.
This is a modern incarnation of the same discredited watchmaker design argument used by William Paley in the 18th century, in an attempt to disprove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
The second alternative is equally unsatisfactory, suggesting that chance alone has provided just the right Goldilocks combination of physical laws and constants in our world to generate the carbon-based molecular precursors of life; although conceding that evolution eventually takes control to finish the job.
This scenario has received support from the current Multiverse paradigm which proposes that our universe is just one of a very large or infinite number of distinct spatial volumes, each with its own set of characteristics and laws. It is therefore statistically possible that life arose in our universe and possibly others because of fortuitous chance alone.
Some theoretical support for this option is also provided by string theory, which confirms the possibility that a multiverse-type mathematical structure with an extremely large set of possible configurations is topologically feasible.
Nevertheless unquantifiable possibilities or mathematical feasibilities do not prove a real-world causal relationship.
Both these scenarios therefore fall far short of providing rigorous or even elementary evidence in attempting to answer this crucial question- how and why did the delicate and highly improbable combination of matter and forces essential for the creation of life came into existence in the first place.
However, a third pathway to the solution, which invokes evolutionary and information theory at a far deeper level, offers a more rational scientific explanation, without requiring the services of a either a deity or roulette wheel.
Part of the answer is connected to the revolutionary idea that cosmologist Lee Smolin introduced over a decade ago, which postulates that each generation of universes has the capacity to spawn child universes, each with slightly altered physical parameters in a mutated form of its parent. If these changes allow for small increases in inflation, this may kick-start larger universes that do not collapse as quickly as smaller ones and which will eventually have the capacity and longevity to create stars, planets, heavier elements such as carbon, complex organic molecules and eventually life in some form.
In other words, universes capable of generating life will be selected by the larger environment of a possible multiverse in the biological Darwinian sense, according to the rules of mutation, selection and replication.
It is now proposed by David Tow that this scenario could be combined with new information-based evolutionary theory, currently being developed by the Centre, to offer a third and more verifiable way of explaining life’s existence.
Since its genesis as single-cell organisms on earth nearly 4 billion years ago, life in its various forms has continued to evolve towards higher levels of genetic and neural complexity; expanding its capacity for more complex information processing, decision-making and knowledge aggregation. This has allowed it to continue to adapt and survive in a radically changing environment and according to David Tow implies the existence of a powerful secondary Darwinian evolutionary selection process at work.
New information and decision network evolutionary theory suggests the possibility that life is selected by the environment of the larger universe as an efficient form of information processor, with the capacity to progress towards higher levels of processing and intelligence, as predicted by stronger versions of the Anthropic principle. Such systems therefore have the requisite complexity and capacity to maximise the amount of information generated over the life of the universe. This is the key to the puzzle.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the symbiosis of human and computational intelligence has greatly amplified the level of information and knowledge generation and will continue to do so at an exponential rate. This ratcheting process will likely result, in the view of a number of philosophers and cosmologists, in the eventual emergence of a super- intelligent form of life and mind, expanding to become co-existent with the cosmos.
For example, eminent physicist Professor Frank Tipler in his ground-breaking book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, postulates that life could survive indefinitely in a re-collapsing universe undergoing an infinite number of chaotic space-time oscillations. This would occur if such super-intelligent life forms were able to send an infinite number of light rays back and forth between themselves in subjective time, processing an infinite amount of information. In other words, accelerate the rate of information processing faster than the approach of the final singularity or big crunch.
But regardless of such a final outcome, if life has been selected by the cosmic environment as a mechanism for generating an increasing amount of information, the capacity to manage entropy and energy resources within the universe would be more effectively achieved. Therefore by selecting those physical laws and states most likely to generate information – the cosmos has created the potential to extend its own as well as life’s survival.
This then would be the primary function and role of life in the universe.
As a corollary, life could equally be seen as selecting the living space most appropriate to its continued and enduring evolution. Biological processes might in fact be the means of selecting those laws of physics that best boost life’s own survival. The prerequisite conditions for such opportunistic systems will narrow down the range of possible structures to a tiny proportion of available chemical configurations, including those in which the laws of physics have a high probability of supporting life as we know it.
In addition, the primeval mythological notion of a god can be more precisely defined; in terms of a communal intelligence eventually pervading the universe- an infinitely complex network or system of systems connecting all life, with each node acting as a powerful information processor, but inseparable from the whole. The definition of a god within a scientific context therefore is transformed from a fuzzy anthropomorphism into an emergent and continuously unfolding phenomenon, leveraging to higher and higher levels of knowledge, wisdom and potentiality.
