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Scientific Materialism 1
The scientific facts underpinning my philosophy:
The Story of the world.
To start at the very beginning, I am aware of myself and that there is a world around me that I can perceive. I do not know what this world around me is , I do not know that it really exists. For all I know the world I perceive may not really exist at all, and is all just maya. But if I do not accept that the world exists in reality, I can go no further, for an imaginary world defies imagination!. I can go no further, for that assumption is a dead end. If there is no real world at all, then there is no life , no science , no point to anything , no meaning to either life or existence. I fully accept the possibility that the real world doesn't exist at all but reject maya as a foundation for further philosophising. If the world as I percieve does not exist, then I refuse to substitute figments of other people's imagination instead of what is perceptible. I reject God, aliens, magic and all else as being without proof and without hope of proof since perception has been rejected. I cannot percieve a proof without perception.
So
I accept my perceptions as real, or at least, the only
thing I can believe and accept, and go on. The first thing I perceive about the
world is a peculiar consistency in all the things that happen in it. Things go
on in constant repeated patterns, which keep repeating themselves. A ball when
dropped always falls down. If I kick a ball, the ball moves in a certain
predictable way. The sun rises in the east every day and sets in the west. There
are people and objects all around me who behave in certain set predictable ways.
Now people say science gives ''reasons ''for everything. Then they say it
cannot give a reason for the
existence of either life or the universe. But these are people who do not know
what science is. Science does not give a reason for anything. Science is just a
long complex description of the world we see around us. The world which I said
earlier behaves in set and predictable ways. Because it is so repetitive, it is
easily described, and one has to hunt long and hard for things that are not
predictable. People talk about science being right or wrong. But the fact is, it
is not science which is right. Instead it is more correct to say that if
something is right , then it is science. The history of science is just a long
sequence of descriptions of the world which got better and better. As I said, if
you drop a ball, it falls down, and we all know it. but a more complete
description of the phenomenon was given by Newton when he got inspired by a
falling apple.
He
gave the phenomenon the name of gravitation and we like to say that Newton
discovered gravitation. The way I would say it is that he fully described the
phenomenon of falling. And attraction. And the way things move around us. We
have all observed these things but Newton described them with
much more thoroughness than the rest of us.
Scientific words like gravitation are just a short way of representing
ideas, so that one word like gravitation represents a whole sequence of ideas.
The same with mathematics. There is nothing complex or frightening about maths,
it is just a way of representing ideas in figures and symbols instead of in
words. So all science is, just a comprehensive description of the world we
perceive by our senses, using words and symbols to represent long pieces of
observation. Advances in science simply mean a more and more accurate
description of the world that we see with our senses. A world that can be real
or not, but certainly a world that is predictable. Science being the name for
the description of this predictability.
I
cannot start to reinvent science by myself, so I accept the body of scientific
work done by others as being OK, and proceed from there. What all does
this science tell us about the world we perceive? A lot and here goes!
'Science tells us that the world started with a big bang. Or rather, that
the world around us behaves as if everything started with a big bang. In that
big bang, energy ,matter, space and time were created. Please realise that these
are just words that stand for the things we can perceive. Space is what we can
see with our eyes, matter is what we can feel with our hands, energy is a word
that stands for the motion of both ourselves and the objects around us and time
is the memory that we have. It does not give any reason or meaning for what
these things are, but simply describe them and their properties. Very
accurately.
After the big bang, and the creation of these four things , the world
that we see around us today slowly took shape. These four essential things are
inter convertible according to science. We all know after the atom bomb that
matter and energy are inter convertible. Similarly, space and time are inter
convertible, sort of.
The four things, once created, went along to form the other things that
we can see around us. At first matter consisted of just hydrogen diffusely
distributed, but ripples in space time caused it to be concentrated in some
places which subsequently became stars. Since everything started with a big
bang, all these stars were moving away from each other. The stars which were
created lived for around 9 billion years and converted hydrogen into helium.
After 9 billion years there was no more hydrogen left and so other complex
reactions took place inside the stars resulting in the formation of all the 105
or so elements. When these complex reactions took place, so much energy got
generated that the stars expanded to a huge size to become red giants. Then when
no more reactions were possible any more, they collapsed with an almighty bang
and spewed out all the elements that they had created. Only a small proportion
of the original hydrogen had condensed into stars . The rest of the hydrogen was
still around and was still forming new stars all the time, throughout the 9
billion years. But after 9 billion years had passed all these new elements were
also available for use, so they were also included in the formation of new
stars. Some of the new stars which were formed had planet systems and one such
was the solar system. This has been around for 4 billion years now, so that the
universe is around 13 or maybe a little more years. The earth, and the other
planets were also created at the same time as the sun and are hence also 4
billion years old.
Let us now forget about the rest of the universe and concentrate on what
was happening here on earth. No doubt similar changes have been happening in
other star systems which have been created.
On earth a certain proportion of various elements created in some
supernova explosion were present. These combined together to form molecules.
Some of these reacted together to form other combinations of molecules and some
of these reactions were very complex. The earth received energy from the
radiations of the sun and these varied from time to time, which we call seasons.
These are just differential heating of the water, air and land molecules. Many
different seasonal ages came and went, like the ice ages. But the most complex
molecules were those involving carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The molecules and
their complex interactions are what we call life.
Life is inevitable given the atoms which exist. Once these atoms got
created , their interaction occurred by set rules, which followed rules created
in the big bang. Given these atoms and molecules, life simply had to exist. It
crystallised just as ice crystallises out of water when the temperature is
lowered. To one who doesn't know the laws of how crystals are forms, looking at
the wonderful patterns of snowflakes never fails to evoke wonder, especially
since no two of them are alike. No doubt they are beautiful and though I have
never seen snow, I have seen pictures, and they really were beautiful. But I
know why they form and I know why life forms. Given the rules of interaction
between elements, they are both inevitable.
Life crystallised out of the primitive cauldrons of our planet very early
on in it's existence, probably 3 billion or so years ago. When we look at life,
we marvel at the incredible complexities and myriad forms but it is useful to
leave our emotions behind and just
look at life as an inevitable consequence of the existence of carbon, hydrogen
and oxygen. Life in the early days was much simpler. of course, but it got more
complex very quickly. The formation of chains of nucleotides into DNA is
understandable , but why it should be used as a code for formation of other
molecules by enzymes which are themselves created by the same DNA is difficult
to understand. Nobody, starting from the elements and the same conditions has
been able to recreate anything like life. Maybe it needs a very long period of
complex organic reactions to constantly take place before chance creates the
right combination of chemicals to be present at the right place and at the right
time. Obviously, if it is possible and you give it long enough time, it will
happen. And it did.
The rules of life were determined just like the rules of chemical
interaction were determined - after all life is nothing but a complex organic
chemical reaction. Once those rules were in place then the rest of the
mysteries of life become revealed as nothing but a complex crystal that dazzles
everyone by it's brilliant appearance - pretty but not a mystery. These simple
rules have translated themselves into the myriad interplay of that we call life.
The evolution of life out of the molecules of carbon and friends was as I
said before, inevitable. It was possible and therefore it happened. It was pure
chance, though. The conditions were right on earth. The temperature was right
which is a way of saying there were narrow flux in the range of energy
transferred from our star to the earth which allowed the molecules to exist but
also allowed enough changes to engender complexity. The atoms and molecules were
present in the right proportions, or near enough. That is all that was required
for the production of carbon based molecules that we call organic molecules
because they are the building blocks of life.
The next ingredient was time. Because life is not just a collection of
organic molecules, it is far more complex than that. There are two core
definitions which are very important at this point. The first is life and the
other is intelligence. First what is life. My definition is a complex chemical
reaction which is capable of sustaining itself
indefinitely, by means of storing information required for its self
perpetuation within some of the reacting molecules, which increases in
complexity progressively over time. What are the key words here? First it is
complex, not just H and o forming h2o. Second, this complexity increases over a
period of time, which is what we call evolution. Third, it involves
storing of information which is in the form of DNA. The second important
definition is intelligence. What is that? It is the culmination of the
generation of complexity in life. Intelligence starts when information of
happenings in the environment around is stored within the complex molecular
interaction called life. The culmination of intelligence is when enough capacity
to store and analyse environmental happenings is achieved so that a unit of life
can store all the primary reaction information secondarily and can manipulate it
directionally.
To explain I really have to elaborate, so bear with me. At the beginning of the earth, there were molecules. Because the conditions were right, carbon based molecules were generated. Because the conditions were right, these carbon based molecules started interacting with themselves. Slowly these became more complex. Simple carbon molecules like methane and ammonia reacted to form lipids, simple carbohydrates and simple nucleotides and amino acids. Everything was random and directionless. These these reacted together to form more complex carbohydrates, lipids and short proteins. Still everything was random. The lipids joined together to form micelles with simple hydrophobic and hydrophilic interaction and formed simple membranes. Simple proteins reacted with basic carbon molecules and nucleotides. Some of these associated with lipid membranes and this was when life got created. As I said before in the definition, life is a self perpetuating reaction. Until now all reactions were random, but now it became possible for a self perpetuating reaction to start. This probably started in small isolated areas at first when these molecules started going through the same set of reactions over and over again. Self perpetuation means that once it gets started it does not stop but keeps going on and on and on for long periods of time.. Until now all reactions were random, but once such a self perpetuating reaction starts, it is always preferred over a random reaction, by its very nature, because it does not stop. Once you have many similar self perpetuating reactions, the one with more self perpetuation property is preferred over others with less self perpetuation, because it keeps going for longer. We dont need cells DNA or enzymes or any of the other chemicals associated with life. Just a self perpetuating reaction is enough for the simplest forms of life, because the moment it starts, the principle of evolution takes over. The principle of evolution is what I just stated a moment ago, reactions with more self perpetuation are preferred over others, so that steadily all the molecules arrange themselves into more and more complex interactions, preserving only one property which is self perpetuation.
If any one reaction was useless and died out, it was of no importance at
all, as long as other reactions continued. Of course it was within the realms of
chance that all the reactions died out, in which case earth would not have had
life. A temperature increase or slight variation n the reaction mix may have
been enough. If the weather changes drastically enough, life may have died out,
and if it changes drastically enough it may still die out. We dont know in how
many countless planets in countless plane systems, life like reactions started
but never progressed or aborted half way or maybe are still in the process of
progression. Anyway the point is that the important thing for life to continue
is that somewhere in the world these reaction should go on, individual reactions
are of no importance. Also, the entire earth can be thought of as one giant
reaction, incredibly more complex that any individual reaction. In other words
the ecology of the biosphere with the complex interactions between themselves is
the mother of all complex reactions as Saddam would say. The earth is one life,
with its many units interlinked complexly just as the many cells of the body
unite to create a multicellular organism
Once life formed, it evolved quickly and life as we know it with genetic
code and protein enzymes and cell membranes and reproduction by dividing and all
the rest of it in bacteria like units was in place. Unicellular organism had
arrived. What happened to all the other types of self perpetuating life forms?
They died out like the dinosaurs, unable to compete with the more efficient life
forms. Some survived, like some early bacteria or virus. But survivability was
the only criteria. Of course chance also played a role. Why only one genetic
code which is nearly universal for all life on earth? That was the way the
cookie crumbled.
Then multicellular organisms evolved out of these. Again only chance and
the principle of evolution got to work to create it. Unicellular organisms have
two principles for survival - eat to become big and divide. Once divided the two
cells were separate and again had only one principle, eat and divide. For
multicellular organisms, it was different, in that the unit should survive,
individual cells could sacrifice themselves for the sake of other genetically
identical cells. In other words the cell has to become altruistic for the sake
of his sister cells. This could have been achieved in many ways but somehow it
was apoptosis which was the mechanism in animal cells. This is a mechanism by
which a cell will die by an inherent mechanism within it unless the sister cells
support it by providing a signal permitting it to live. These signals which are
growth factors control the cell. Without them the cell would die so that the
sisters may live. Cells escaping this control mechanism are no longer altruistic
- they are malignant cells. So mutations which produce loss of altruism cause
cancer. So the next step was multicellular organisms which work on the principle
of altruism.
Next big step? Ability to process environmental information. This can be
done by single cells in a primitive way or by a multicellular organism using a
nervous system. Plants do not have a nervous system and process info like a
unicellular organism. Animals and invertebrates have a nervous system. This
nervous system got more and more complex. There came the capacity to store
environmental information which is memory. Already much of the attributes of
life have arrived. Only one more step is required for humans. That is the
ability to store and process so much information that it understands the genetic
code itself.
The genetic code is there in every prokaryote and has enough information
for reproducing itself. Each eukaryotic cell has enough information for
reproducing every cell in its body. The information resides in the genes, but
concomitant cytoplasm is also a must. Cytoplasm is the apparatus for deciphering
the genetic code. The code is meaningless without the cytoplam, and both have to
evolve together, side by side. The cytoplasm of a bacteria cannot read the code
of a human. But genetic code and cytoplasm alone is enough for survival only in
plants and simple animals. As the ability to store and analyse information
developed, survivability requirement increased to genetic code plus cytoplasm
plus environmental training from parents. Without parenting the most complex of
animals did not have enough information to achieve the necessary sophistication
for survival. Because evolution is a continuous process and one organism evolved
from another, everybody had parents to take care of tem so lack of parenting was
not a problem. If chance separated parents and offspring , the offspring died.
In the end humans arrived and humans could understand and store all of
the information in the DNA in other more complex forms of data storage, like
computers and machines. The task is still to be finished but hopefully it will
be finished soon.
That has been the story of the universe and the story of life.
Next comes the application of all of this knowledge in our personal life.