A New Physics Theory of Life
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
Nowadays he's mostly forgotten, but its interesting to take the time to read his works, specially because it was (and still is) different from the main/stablished ideas in physics.
http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/2/37/2011/esd-2-37-2011.html
If this model of dissipation supersedes it, I wonder what political effects it will have? What will the dawkins of dissipation persuade/permit us to believe about ourselves?
The human question is whether we can develop a better localized system for our species. The problem is that if you're on top, Darwinian survival is a pretty sweet gig. That disincentivizes people in power from taking a long-term view.
The criteria in the article were input energy and a "bath" into which that energy can be dissipated. Perhaps there is a minimum potential difference before structures will self-organize--or perhaps the probability of self-organization is proportional to the difference.
Speculating along this line of reasoning: On Mercury, you have plenty of input energy, but few options for dissipating it. On Europa, you may have the reverse problem.
For all we know, however, Europa may actually have life. Our sample set is too small.
Perhaps the Earth biosphere is the only "open" system in the Universe that keeps its entropy low by increasing the entropy of its surroundings, i.e. the rest of the Universe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Seager#Seager_equation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equationThey are stable, emit heat and replicate ...
Makes me think even more about Fermi paradox.
Physicists promoted some dangerous ideas in Economics, but good ideas in Chemistry. Where does Biology fit in that mix?
For instance, I feel like I could ask "What if the universe is really a network of time bundles?" and then I make up a definition of "time bundle", generate a bunch of fractals, and then loosely say "hey, that looks like a galaxy". It just isn't very good science to me. It reminds me of that history channel show "Ancient Aliens" where they keep asking "What if?" Yeah, so maybe one of those 8,000 theories is actually true, but it's just not all that satisfying.
I prefer traditional science articles: observation or hypothesis, followed by direct experiment, followed by conclusion. This type of science makes up 99% of research today (read any scientific journal), and in my opinion is much more intellectually interesting. It's like everybody in the media focuses on the one article on beer carbonation in Physical Review Letters and ignores the other stuff. Why don't I see many articles on HN about cellular networks, or fuel cell polymers, or organic photovoltaics? These topics are exciting too.
The title is sensationalized, but I found the rest of the article to be an honest description of (what I understand of) England's paper. I particularly liked the way that the article discussed the (technical) work that led up to England's.
Is there something about this article that you really didn't like?
In explaining abstract concepts it's helpful to clarify what something is not as well as find analogs to what it is.
"Quanta is an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation to enhance public understanding of science."
The key phrase here is "enhance public understanding." It's natural that the public, upon encountering a theory of the origins of life, will think about Darwin. The article anticipates this line of thought and addresses it.
I see nothing egregiously wrong here. Shouldn't we support publications for attempting to bring thoughtful, well-meaning, reasonably well researched science journalism to the lay public? This article does some spoon-feeding, but spoon-feeding is better than junk-feeding, and it's certainly better than no feeding at all.
It seems like lately science is getting more and more defensive to protect itself against religious forces. While understandable, such a change is not good for the progress of science. Science is a free-thinker's religion. Let's keep it that way. Nothing at all is above getting challenged or questioned. Neither god, nor evolution.
Your comment that Quanta is "an editorially independent branch of the Simons Foundation" jogged my memory.
There was an article from Quanta that appeared on HN 11 days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8699422). It had the same tone ("stat-mech techniques give basic insight into how universe works"). That article was more in-specialty for me than the article in this post, and I felt some of the grouchiness mentioned by @Xcelerate above ("claims to significance much greater than demonstrated significance"). I wrote a grouchy comment and then deleted it, feeling it was ungenerous.
While writing that comment, I noticed that the work in that other article (follow the link to the PDF on arxiv) was supported by the Simons Foundation. I thought, oh well, I guess I could regard Quanta as a press outlet for the Simons Foundation (which is fine).
But, as you say, they are indeed claiming editorial independence. Hmm. This isolated case doesn't mean much, but perhaps something to keep an eye on. (The OP here does not seem to be supported by Simons.)
As a species, I don't think we're even ready for the answers to any of the scientific and philosophical questions we've been asking since the beginning of time anyway.
Incidentally, why was trhway's comment downvoted? It expresses a perfectly logical objection to the "plant" hypothesis.
It's like someone telling you the Halting Theorem shows there are undecidable computations. This has never dissuaded a single engineer from working on better compiler optimizations, or even limited detection of halting behavior, it just shows the general problem is insoluble.
Perhaps we may never be able to discover exactly how our life came about, or how the universe came about, but there are lots of other related questions narrower in scope that are just as valuable to answer.
I'd say the philosophical justifications are frankly irrelevent. I know this rankles people, I've seen it rankle people debating Lawrence Krauss. They provide a good backwards justification for having logical confidence in our scientific endeavors, but really, science is about making predictions and if you come up with a theory that makes useful predictions, allows you to build things and conduct experiments with agree with the model, in other words, something that "works", the philosophical underpinnings are not going to cause anyone outside Philosophy departments to sweat.
Thus, more useful than "how did OUR life actually evolve" which may be beyond the limits of the historical data or our ability to analyze, other questions are "are other kinds of life possible", and "how can other kinds of life evolve". If there's a useful theory of how other kinds of life can come about, and if we can actually test it with experiments, and actually create this life, then I'd say the "science fiction" of believing that science can answer the really tough questions, and drove physicists to actually solve a sub-problem, was a worthy bit of cultural driving force.
In other words, give me my beliefs in space empires, and warp travel. It inspires me, and others, into science, and useful endeavors, even if the primary goal (FTL) is impossible.
i always curious why we say that when there are right in front of our eyes evidence to the contrary - galaxies moving away with speeds higher than the light speed. FTL is impossible only in SR - ie. in the static continuous space-time - which is only approximation (and not really true) of the real space-time.
Space itself is expanding - so galaxies really far away are being pushed away FTL but they're not actually 'moving' FTL. They couldn't travel that fast towards us, or indeed towards anything.
it is kind like saying that because all stones fall down, one can't fly or jump. Like stone falling down, space expansion (cooling down) is an entropy increasing process. What we know is that any entropy increasing process can be reversed by applying energy (which gets obtained by even more increasing of entropy somewhere else).
Faith in science.
There seems to be a negative connotation to the phrase "faith in science" because faith and science are pitted as opposites here. The only difference is I can see plenty of reasons to have faith in something that has repeatedly given useful feedback, so I'm not even sure the phrase deserves all of the negative connotation it receives.
> We can't see it, touch it or measure it in any way.
Consciousness interacts with the world through its affect on material substances. And so there is a window by which we can study consciousness objectively.
That is, you can never know if you're "done". That's why we keep pressing on with lossless data compression. We can never be sure we're finished.
We don't know when we've "learnt everything" that's possible to know by science and since we don't know what the limits are, why stop asking why?
We could have stopped with Classical Physics, but we kept pressing on and got Quantum Mechanics and General Relatively. We could have stopped with the Bohr model of the atom, but we keep probing deeper into particle physics and now we have the standard model.
Until you know your quest is futile, why stop?
HackerNews is a community oriented around YCombinator startups. The probability that any one startup is successful is vanishingly small. The vast vast majority of new businesses fail. You have to have a little bit of hubris to assume that you're going to strike gold on your particular venture. No one can predict success.
This false belief that your particular crazy idea is destined to make you rich and famous produces useful behavior for society. Since we cannot predict from the top down which ideas in the frontiers of idea-space are going to evolve as a best fit for current demands, the best thing we can do is conduct lots and lots of trial experiments -- startups colonizing all peaks and valleys of the idea-space.
Most will fail to climb to any peaks, left stuck in valleys. A few will climb a mountain that rises taller than others.
But this only happens because people perceive there's mountains to climb, that climbing mountains have rewards, and that it is possible to climb them.
Let people have their dreams.
It's not inconceivable that much of what we consider science fiction today will be a reality in a hundred years time.
Suppose that science can never explain consciousness. Can you (or anyone) explain why science can never explain consciousness?
If not, in what sense do you claim to understand the limitations of science? It sounds to me like you're just assuming that these are the limitations.
(We know a lot about the limitations of science. Science can't produce a rocket that goes faster than light, for example. Currently we don't know enough about consciousness to know what the limitations of science are with respect to it.)
The religious person is the one claiming something without and reasoning or evidence. Therefore the onus is on them to prove that God exists, rather than the atheist to prove he doesn't.
There is no evidence to suggest that science will be able to observe an experience, so the onus is on you to prove that its a reasonable suggestion.
We may one day be able to measure experience, but we don't know yet. Until then science is the best tool we have.
This reasoning is nothing at all like being asked to prove there is no god, the history of science shows that we are able to untangle the mechanisms of the natural world, and there are no evidence to the contrary.
Now, in the eyes of science it is not the responsibility of a religious person to prove that god exists or does not exist, it is as much the responsibility of science - it's just very much a non-topic in science since no evidence have been found either way.
(And there are a lot of evidence that science will be able observe an experience - we already can do very basic recognition of patterns in brain waves based on what the subject is experiencing, we are starting to map, understand and simulate a human brain. Eventually that might turn into an engineering problem of hooking up the proper equipment to neurological pathways.)
This is a bold claim. You might as well say that science can't prove electrons exist or that water is wet.
What do you mean by 'proof', and why is that what you choose to mean by it?
What we call measurement is a mental model that we invented to help us think about reality. We don't have a measurement model for consciousness yet, but that doesn't necessarily mean we never will.
Interesting study though.
Technically though, when someone takes an MRI of your brain, that means your consciousness is being observed.
There is, however, a science, which asserts that every human being can understand consciousness and experience it as separate from the matter if he attempts. Read Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda if you are really curious.
Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference. Notice there is no mention of "matter" in that definition.
If an idea has any consequences it can be tested by practicing the discipline of science. If an idea is consequence-free it is boring. Ideas about consciousness that are fully decoupled from material consequences are boring: they entail that no human action is caused by consciousness. For example, my consciousness would have to be unrelated to the contents of this message, because it was generated by making various bits of matter move.
Material consequences are the most studied by science because they are the easiest to get at and they have the widest scope, but we use them to study immaterial and abstract causes all the time.
Here by matter or material includes even ideas and inference because they all stem from mind and mind is built of subtlest matter (as per Samkhya philosophy upon which Raja Yoga is based).
The method to experience of consciousness in Raja Yoga is not consequence free – direct experience of ones own consciousness is the best experience a man can have, and it transforms him thereafter forever. Also read Kundalini by Gopi Krishna.
The process itself is far from boaring and you'll be surprised the changes/experiences you start to observe within few weeks/months of starting the enquiry. (But beware of scammers who sell trademark techniques!)
Btw, I'm not professing any religion here. It's just that there's a method of enquiry which many people throughout the history have attempted and they have experienced something which you also can provided that you dare to. (Samkhya philosophy in fact denies existence of God as we know it but only professes idea of pure consciousness)
Swamij.com is also a good read for curious folks. I have been researching and practicing for some time. I have good number of proofs which modern science has recognized, plus my experiences of last few months. I plan to write an article on this some day. .
Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas via systematic observation, controlled experiment, and Bayesian inference.
Notice there is no limit on the nature of the ideas. Anyone who says "science only deals with matter" is saying "I don't understand science."
Science is a discipline, a practice, not a method or a specific body of knowledge. The practice of the discipline of science is our only means of producing new knowledge and discarding old knowledge.
So I'm not sure what these inherent limitations you're talking about are. If and idea can't be tested by systematic observation, controlled experiment or Bayesian inference then it must be an idea that has no consequences of any kind, which is to say: an idea that is boring. Otherwise, if it has consequences, it can be tested using the discipline of science, and some Bayesian statement made regarding its plausibility.
Beyond a certain level, physics becomes philosophical, with all of the usual drawbacks of philosophy: lots of outlandish conjectures with no way to verify any of them anytime soon.
The Popperian ideal of science that you describe is only practiced within what Kuhn calls "normal science", i.e. pushing the cutting edge, bit by bit, safely from behind the blade. Sure, this makes up 99% of scientific research, but most of it is boring. Significant progress almost always requires "revolutionary science", i.e. jumping in front of the blade, into the bleeding edge. When you live in the bleeding edge, the normal process of cojectures-and-refutations no longer applies. (How do you verify/falsify the origin of life without going back billions of years in a time machine?)
Unfortunately, the unkempt bleeding edge of science tends to attract journalistic sensationalism, just like a pool of blood attracts flies.
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published in 1962. For over half a century since then, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and political scientists have been studying how modern science works, both on a small scale (in the lab) and on a large scale (as a society). Most of the results seem to confirm the basic idea set out by Kuhn, although many details remain controversial.
Rest assured, the boldness and tentativeness of scientific conjectures are not under any serious doubt. The part of Popper's model that later researchers have challenged is mostly about refutation and/or verification. For political and psychological reasons, as well as practical limitations, it is exceedingly difficult for scientists to conduct experiments that conclusively and unambiguously refute a hypothesis.
As a result, the bleeding edge of scientific research often follows fads rather than solid experimental evidence. Personal charisma, funding decisions, and political concerns dominate decision-making processes, and evidence is often so ambiguous at this stage that anyone can cite it to their advantage. It takes a while for this craziness to settle down.
In fields like theoretical physics where it is especially difficult to perform meaningful experiments, the time it takes for the dust to settle tends to be longer than in other fields. It can take decades, compared to months or years in other fields.
Only when a theory is no longer a fad and falls safely behind the cutting edge (i.e. it becomes "normal science"), do scientists finally get a chance to scrutinize it with solid experiments. Even then, politics can get in the way of proper refutation while the proponents of the theory occupy authoritative positions in academia. As Max Planck once said:
> "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
(The above quote is often summarized as "Science advances one funeral at a time.")
Summary: A lot of conditions need to be just right in order for bold conjectures to be boldly refuted on the basis of solid experimental evidence. Bleeding-edge science often doesn't meet such conditions, due to both technical and human shortcomings.
Source: I have a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) [1], an umbrella term for interdisciplinary studies of science and technology in social, political, and historical contexts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology_and_societ...
It's totally fine that coming up with a plan to falsify some of these theories is beyond our current capabilities. I don't expect that, and I don't think it's necessary before we can discuss interesting ideas. But the second someone gives up on falsifying their theory and starts evangelizing, it ceases to be science. That should not be in dispute.
In my words, not his, he advocates that real scientific progress happens by a sort of natural selection of theories. The basic idea is that new grad students pick whatever theories are most likely to easily let them publish science papers; so that basically certain theories make their grad students more likely to write papers with them inside. Those theories thereby "reproduce" and/or "die".
So, for example, we had an article here the other day which lamented why quantum mechanics was still Copenhagen-y rather than being dominated by pilot waves. The basic answer to this, following Lakatos, is that doing stuff with naive quantum mechanics and probabilistic thinking is easier for grad students to work with, as opposed to extending the pilot wave theory to encompass your new direction and then examining it for statistics.
The reason this makes a lot of people uncomfortable is that it messes with our notion of scientific progress. This notion is rooted in 19th century romanticism, and predicts inevitable progress toward totality. It sees science as a matter of manifest destiny, guided by the truth and approximating it ever more closely.
Evolution, however, does not have any goals. It might or might not tend to produce complex and intelligent organisms, but it sure ain't guided by any overarching ideal or telos apart from the laws of thermodynamics. Evolution wanders aimlessly, making do with whatever the universe randomly throws at it. This is not the kind of model that most people want to associate with science.
Meanwhile, transhumanists who rally around the idea of the technological singularity represent the last holdout of the old, romantic ideal. They can maintain a semblance of consistency because they also reject the relevance of evolutionary biology to the future of humanity: the age of evolution is over, and AI will take over from here. I'm not quite sure what to make of this idea, but it will be really interesting to watch how their predictions unfold (or not).
I like quotes like this from the article:
This principle would apply to inanimate matter as well. “It is very tempting to speculate about what phenomena in nature we can now fit under this big tent of dissipation-driven adaptive organization,” England said. “Many examples could just be right under our nose, but because we haven’t been looking for them we haven’t noticed them.”
“Consider a Mayan astronomer, he suggested… the Maya had a theory of astronomy that enabled them to explain their observations and to make predictions long into the future. It was a theory in the utilitarian modern spirit: a set of rules, quite mechanical, which when followed produced accurate results. Yet it seemed to lack a kind of understanding. “They counted a certain number and subtracted some numbers, and so on,” he said. “There was no discussion of what the moon was. There was no discussion even of the idea that it went around.”
“Now a “young man” approaches the astronomer with a new idea. What if there are balls of rock out there, far away, moving under the influence of forces just like the forces that pull rocks to the ground? Perhaps it would make possible a different way of calculating the motions of the heavenly bodies. “Yes,” says the astronomer, “and how accurately can you predict eclipses?” He says, I haven’t developed the thing very far yet.” Then says the astronomer, “Well, we can calculate eclipses more accurately than you can with your model, so you must not pay any attention to your idea because obviously the mathematical scheme is better.”
Most people would rather read about the wild theory with balls of rock than the refinement of 1 decimal place in the calculation of the location of Venus.
"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, 'Well, it still might be true.'"
Feynman himself was a theorist, but the domain he worked on, mostly quantum electrodynamics, made very specific numerical predictions which were possible to test.
The vast majority of research is simply not story-friendly. Stories are a tool for making facts meaningful to readers, and except for those in the field, "significantly faster and more robust way of registering two images" or "new limits on the 17 keV neutrino" or even "some genetic markers of this form of cancer vs that" simply aren't meaningful[#]. People will get up in the morning tomorrow knowing those things and live their lives as they did the day before.
The average number of meaningful conclusions from an experiment is much less than one. To get meaningful conclusions you need to put a lot of experiments together. This is why theorists get so much press, because their work often covers a great deal of experimental history. Unfortunately, theoretical work is also often nonsense, or over-stated, or wrapped up in a story that makes the theory of the Higgs Boson look like the work of one person rather than four or more (Higgs himself has been quite clear about this.)
Bridging this gap between story and science--if it can be bridged at all in an honest and effective way--is one of the great unsolved problems of the age of science.
My own contribution to this problem is a novel--Darwin's Theorem--which curiously enough is based on some highly speculative ideas about the mathematical foundations of evolutionary biology: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-ebook/dp/...
[#] all examples from my own work, some of which has ultimately had moderate real-world consequences, particularly the image-registration stuff, but even there it took 20 years for anything very interesting to happen.