THE ‘I’ AND THE EMERGENCE OF LIFE by Frank W. Andres © Copyright, Frank W. Andres, 2019. All Rights Reserved.
The ‘I’…and the Emergence of Life
a minibook
by Frank W. Andres
Bulletin!!!
We think we know how life started!
It was the ‘I’…that did it.
Every atom has consciousness…
a crazy idea?
There are seven disciplines and areas of thought
that point to this phenomenal assertion.
We are 85 percent certain this is true.
This leads to cures for cancer.
The essence of Life
is a stream
of hydrogen ions!!!
This is a Minibook…..Instead of expressing an idea and then blowing the number of pages up, up towards three hundred just so we can charge $25 as is currently the fashion, we are presenting the kernel of an idea….in the hopes that ideas can be transmitted more rapidly and breakthroughs can occur now, not next century. There is a fifty percent chance that humanity will not make it through this century….it is important that we make as much progress as fast as we can…so as to avoid an untimely demise.
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Introduction
We are scientists…we are not Creationists! We are philosophers…we are not Bible slammers! Our ideas proceed from the book, Man and Cosmos…The Science of Everything…by the author of this minibook.. The first draft of that book was written during the 1970s…it was based on the hypothesis that humans are animals. This hypothesis has been found to be scientifically verifiable from the delineation of the human genome…and the comparison of that genome with those of the great apes….On the basis of that analysis, humans are 99.3 percent identical to chimpanzees. If this is true…and it is…then the social sciences must be rewritten and placed on a biological base. Such an empowered science of man and woman is urgently needed in a century in which there is a fifty percent chance that human civilization as we know it…may be extinguished.
Utilizing the Science of Everything…we have come up with an astonishing hypothesis…It appears that every atom in the Cosmos…possesses consciousness!…If there is theological precursor for our ideas…then it is shamanism…a world-wide religion that existed 30,000 years ago. That theology held the belief…that consciousness exists in all living things…That theology was confused by the practice of utilizing hallucinations brought about by food and sensory deprivation in the arctic regions where that theology arose…these practices spread worldwide, utilizing the application of drugs in warmer areas to induce hallucinations. This religion was based on the concept of ‘spirits,’ which were seen in hallucinatory trances…which led to the religions found world-wide today. Shamanism is consistent with our Cosmic theology in that it believes that consciousness exists in all things…It is different because it believes that much of the ‘plant-animal’ world goes to a ‘spirit world’ after death…A shaman in a trance…often has a spirit guide animal who helps him traverse the spirit world…to heal sickness, control the weather, or influence the hunt…and visit relatives and friends of those in a community… shamanism seems to deal mainly with fear that exists in a hostile environment in which people may live…and with the fear of death and loss of loved ones….
A Cosmic theology such as ours…also identifies two worlds…however, we see one world built up out of the other…The Cosmos is composed of particles… that world possesses its own basic laws and principles such as Equality of entities, Truth, Beauty, Will, and Love….The plant-animal world built from these particles represents a second level…with its own priorities such as survival of the fittest and avoidance of death in general….Entities in the Cosmic world are eternal…death is not an issue….As abhorrent as death is to the plant-animal world… that world actually is rife with death…much of it in fact is built upon it..There is only one sun…As far as our plant-animal world is concerned…all energy in plant-animal life comes from it…so if entities do not convert sun into energy, they must eat each other to obtain that energy…In shamanism the difference between these two worlds is blurred…in the hopes of ameliorating fears of death…Shamans have constructed a theology that allows the plant-animal life to continue in a way…somewhere else…after death….
In our conception of things…the plant-animal world and the Cosmic world intersect every day…in that many of the concepts from the Cosmic world Equality, Truth, Beauty, Will and Love…are valid and powerful when utilized in the plant-animal world in relationships among people and nations…they intersect also in the fact that it seems that one priority of the plant-animal world is to find one other individual…to connect closely with… This close intimate association with another individual is usually in a sexual relationship that produces offspring…A close connection between two entities in the plant-animal world is usually indispensable in meeting the needs of plant-animal life based upon replication…Plant-animal life is transient…a species must reproduce to survive…Such a deep, close sexual connection in the plant-animal world…is actually similar to the Cosmic conception of Love…Will is Cosmic Power which propels Cosmic activity…Love is Cosmic Connection which unites Cosmic activity in Law…Love is Form which contains, restrains Will and Power…Close relationships on earth, even if it is momentary for some animals…might provide connection between ‘I’s that is so close and tight…that the binding of these particles and entities may continue after plant-animal death…Consciousness never dies in the Cosmic world…yet what occurs on earth may impact what happens to entities after plant-animal death…close, intimate connections on earth…might allow I‘s to remain in the Light…in active parts of the universe in a Cosmic eternity….and not be condemned to remain in realms of dark energy and dark matter in the universe…condemned to darkness and restricted activity…forever….
As we say…our hypothesis concerning the ‘I’…that is, concerning the Cosmic world…that all atoms possess consciousness… rises from a Science of Everything…in which the disciplines concerning man and woman are placed on a biological base and become one with the physical and biological sciences…In this way all disciplines can work together, talk to each other… When this is done, there are several different disciplines and areas of thought that speak to the possibility of the existence of the ‘I’ in all living things…philosophy, evolutionary biology, the cosmology of physics, neurological science, the biology of the cell, and theology. Scientists are reluctant to pursue research that may be contaminated by the ideas of a mediaeval Church much less a viewpoint that is pantheistic, animistic in nature. However, it would be tragic, no, way more than tragic…if a cure for cancer were to be long delayed because of things right before them…that they are not allowed to touch. With this in mind…let us consider the origins of life.
Oh, I know…we think of ourselves as being so thoroughly modern… yet there is truth in ideas that have been discarded…I know…we are trying to move out from a Dark Age…there are so many ideas and institutions that have placed a stranglehold on pulses of energy towards progress, towards a bright future for man and womankind…and those negative forces still abound …There is Creationism, there is Donald Trump…the world seems to be bolting off at full speed into the beautiful blue of the future…yet so many ideas and practices are still there..slowing progress…a large part of modern society is seemingly being left further and further behind with archaic ideas….this is tearing the fabric of society apart…It would be easier to get everyone on board if science were moving smoothly…but ideas that we proudly champion as being modern have encountered obstacles…new breakthroughs are needed and ironically we must not let our deprecation of certain ideas from the past… hold us back…perhaps we should take a second and review things…perhaps some things we have thrown on the junk pile actually may possess diamonds of thought that can help us break through and fly into the future….
Yes, Darwin has shown that we are just animals and that life is merely replication of atoms….randomly combining in some ways that are successful in the face of the world…other ways not so successful…Things seem to be controlled, produced by…just blind luck….We are all agreed that there is not some old wise man up in heaven somewhere watching over us…yet…there is the Cosmos…and there is the bizarre flabbergasting fact that each of us… possesses something inside of us…’looking out’…each of us can see that he or she is the center of the universe….and that each animal whether it can understand such a thing…is experiencing the same thing…This is something we must accept even though there is no logic or common sense to unravel the conundrum…..However, the fact is…if we can set aside our fear of sinking back into what has been dismissed as being pagan conceptions…we may find an idea or two that can accelerate us even faster into the future….
There is the idea of the ‘I’. Heretofore, in building a cosmic theology, we have looked to the single-celled animals existing in ancient seas…to sift out truth concerning our consciousness…As recounted below, we have noted how plant-like things became animal-like things almost instantly…this led to the realization that maybe something simple like a hydrogen ion may have been added to the organism that allowed it to perceive, think, and act….Now let us go back even further…back to the first stirrings of life itself…Biology in this respect is like geology…what is happening today, has happened in the past, and will continue into the future…Consciousness doesn’t just sit there…’looking out’…it perceives, thinks, and acts….the first ‘I’ probably could do this too…Let us go back…way back…to the very beginning…If we can see evidence…if we can see the possibility of the ‘I’ operating way back at the very beginning…this would increase the probability even more …that our hypothesis concerning the ‘I’…is true…..
Let Us Review
I have written the following several times before in other places…but for some of you this is the first time…so let us review…For others…you may skip to new sections of this minibook…
To begin with, we are encountering three types of “I”….there is I…that is, there is me…I do things and I am writing this minibook…then there is I…this is an I coupled with an idea…I have an idea, that is, I realize, that there is something inside my head ‘looking out’…this is consciousness…then thirdly, there is ‘I’… this is a particle…something physiologically inside my brain that is performing the ‘looking out’….
So…what is an ‘I’ particle?…I believe that every atom has an ‘I’…Just as you have something ‘looking out’…I believe that every atom has a particle within it…capable of…’looking out’. Scientists are forbad contemplating such things…However, as I have said…six different disciplines and areas of thought I have studied…point toward such a hypothesis….The fight against cancer has been throttled because crucial steps have been blocked…I believe that this fight can gain renewed vigor…if the power of the ‘I’ particle is allowed to open the way….I know this ‘I’ particle hypothesis is surprising ….but science is being slowed in recent decades because of the futility of our instruments…things are either too small…or too fast to be measured correctly…or be discerned at all. I have proposed the use of an interdisciplinary approach to overcome the inadequacies of our instruments. When we utilize such an approach…we uncover surprising things….
Let us start with philosophy and theology….In my book, Man and the Cosmos...I have a chapter entitled…’Man and a Cosmic Theology.’ That chapter begins with the following ideas…
The strategy of the seventeenth century French philosopher, René Descartes (1596-1656), is important in organizing my book, Man and the Cosmos…He believed that one should begin with what is most ‘clear and distinct’ to his or her mind…and then proceed outwards into the world…When he considered what was most ‘clear and distinct’ to his mind…he proclaimed…’I think; therefore, I am.’ What he began with…was his mind… that is, things in his mind were most clear…most distinct to him. Therefore, when I reexamined the social sciences…well, we know we are animals now… we look at DNA…we are 99.3 percent the same as a chimpanzee…so the social sciences must be redone…they must be placed on a biological base…So I utilized Descartes’ approach…and started with philosophy…the science of the mind…then moved out to psychology, the physiology of the brain…then to anthropology, the building of tools which connects the mind with the external world and allows the mind to impact all around it…then there is sociology, the larger tools of society, its institutions and grand systems of interconnection… economics, we learn that goods move one way, money the other…thus flows of money becomes a similacrum for biological activity..out, out to theology, where all collapses into materialism…yet a new kind of materialism…one that embodies mind…and so…we find ourselves back at the beginning again!…Around and around as we work arduously at the conversion process in the grand project of viewing humans as animals…starting with things that are most clear and distinct to us…Out, out, out… to things less clear and distinct….where…in the end…surprisingly…all is one….
There is a second thing Descartes probably meant…with the proclamation …’I think; therefore, I am’…The second thing that he probably meant here was…that he was making an empirical observation!…He was making an empirical observation that sneaks up on a person…then pow!…suddenly, you realize that this observation is hard evidence…And just as he was able to deduce a whole philosophy from this one hard fact…this one sentence…this one syllogism…we too can start with it…we can write a book reworking the social sciences…and we can hypothesize amazing things.
The startling observation that Descartes made…was new…Somehow, no one had really noticed it before…Each person on earth is in a position to make this observation…we all do…yet in a sense we shrug it off and continue on our way. What he observed was...I am thinking, I am seeing, I am acting…I am inspecting the world around me. That I is different from my ordinary I…as I have said, it is an I coupled with an idea…a revolutionary idea…that idea is: I have empirical evidence that there is a part of me…that is different from everything else around me…at least to begin with…There is a part of me that is surprisingly important…This is an idea that lives in my private thoughts…I would never share such an egotistic thought with even my closest friends… There is a part of me that can elevate me to the lofty seat of a king or queen…maybe like a small god…Gee…what is this thing?… We all could use a thing like this,,,that…and we all have it…Okay,, what it is…is an idea…that idea is…that there is something inside of me…that is Cosmic… probably eternal. Why would I think something like this?…because I…I…dammit…am ‘looking out! I...am the center of the world…of the whole Cosmos!
I am…I exist…and this is not merely an illusion caused by a collection of neurons. I am ‘looking out’…and this fact is incontrovertible. As I say…I am the center of the world. I am like a god. Such a realization obviously leads to an enthusiastic acquisition of self respect…All of this is a bit blasphemous … no, it is a whole lot blasphemous…500 years ago…I could well have been burnt alive at the stake for having the audacity to say such a thing.
However, it appears that the whole thing is true…and, the whole thing is startling. Why are we so humble? We each think…know…that we…I…am the ‘eyes’ of the universe. If we are extinguished…if all I‘s are extinguished…the universe would disappear…Bishop George Berkeley went through all of this…but he missed the most important part…Yes, as he said…everything is relative because our I‘s are all in different positions with respect to the world around us…and all perception must be adjusted for differences in perspective…But he missed the most important thing…what Descartes saw right there…at the beginning of his philosophy…Everything is different from me…from my perspective…because I have an I…generated within by an ‘I’…as I have said…quotation marks refer to a part of the brain…that is ‘looking out’.
We are humble, but our experience tells us we should be otherwise… well, we should be proud of ourselves…based on that experience…we are certainly very special…Of course, we can look around, see things and make generalizations…We can conjecture that other organisms, such as our friends, may have I‘s also…so maybe we aren’t so special….As concerning those other organisms…we can never be really certain…What I mean is…I am the center of the universe…each of my friends…feel the same way!?….This is crazy…We can never be fully in another person’s shoes…because, yes, he or she has an I just like mine…but she, he…thinks…he, she…is the center of everything, too….I would have never thought…That person!…thinks he, she, it…is as important as I…the nerve!…But it must be the case…All of these I’s…and what it must mean…is inexplicable!
Well, that is a conundrum we must leave alone..because like Descartes, there is only one truth we really know is true…really, really know is true…and that…is that…I…anyway, for sure…am ‘looking out’. Yes…that is for sure…The rest of you….God bless you… are on your own.
So there is empirical evidence for the existence of the ‘I’…and if another person doubts that I possess such a thing…well, he or she can just simply ask me…and I shall reassure him or her…that it is indeed true…Yes, indeed…I do possess an I...So in this way, a thorough-going scientist can merely go around the world…and every ask every blessed person…if it is indeed true…Are they indeed ‘looking out’…are they truly the center of the universe?.. And yes, that scientist would indeed have empirical evidence of some sort of such a thing ..and while that does not actually prove that many I ‘s exist…still, …if democracy has any validity at all…if in fact everyone you ask…has voted…and has sworn on a pile of cosmic rocks…that what he or she is saying is true…well, it would seem that it is unanimous!…it would seem that there are 7 billion I’s out there…this is all empirically proven to be true!…sort of…, in so far as democracy…may be able to render Truth.
Let us move on to a second point…We can see that all life dies… …so we shall, also. Thus, it appears that our I will be annihilated…and there is nothing we can do about it. What we are forgetting is that we have empirical evidence of another possibility…another truth. We have an I…and we are the center of everything. If this I were expanded trillions and trillions of times…that great I...would be a god. See how philosophy has led straightway to theology…skipping all the steps, all the disciplines in between…we skip directly to the conclusion…Like Descartes…we have an ontological proof that God exists…I believe that this is where the concept of God came from… from a belief we possess…that we possess an I …that is too important to be extinguished…it is a gut feeling that we have…You say …this proves nothing…that I might think there is a green genie in the corner over there…But this…is different…
Given the startling realization that every animal on earth has an I like mine…’looking out’…this gives us a hunch that we can empirically verify our hypothesis…about the I…because we have reason to believe that this ‘I’ in our brain is a particle…Well, in the very, very, very beginning everything was energy…but within microseconds some of that energy became contained… isolated, confined within…particles…Yes the universe we can see is composed of contained energy…composed of particles…so this I of mine must be a phenomenon related to a particle…or particles…so we have a place to start…
If my I is related to a particle…then there is a possibility that we can prove our hypothesis scientifically at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN…What do we know about this I…so that we shall know what we are looking for when we start running experiments on particles?….If we are looking at particles…then the ‘I’ is not ‘spirit’ like the shamans came up in hallucinogenic trances…What else do we know about this ‘I’?
Could it be …that if we learn enough about this so called ‘I’…we might know enough to solve major problems in the world…like cancer?
The ‘I’
As I say…what scientists do know…is that four percent of the Cosmos…the word ‘Cosmos’ with a capital ‘C’ refers to a cosmos which possesses consciousness… Scientists know that everything in the four percent of the Cosmos that is blowing up…and out…that is, the part of the Cosmos that is in the Light…is made of energy…and the amount of this energy is conserved… is preserved…energy is never destroyed…there always has and always will be the same amount of energy in the universe…Nikola Tesla believed that the cosmos was filled with an ocean of energy…He believed that this energy is concentrated at certain points into vortexes…which we call particles which are combined into atoms …or are conveyed in packets which are particles which can move quickly transmitting, impacting other particles with forces…In this way…all of the energy that we see is encased in parcels called particles…energy in packets is able to interact with other matter…with other particles…the rest of the ocean is dark and cannot…All matter and forces which can be identified in the cosmos…is encased in particles… therefore, if there is something inside my head…’looking out’…it must be a particle…let’s call this an ‘I’ particle, or an ‘I’ …for short.
So I have an ‘I’…Does all life have an ‘I’?…Actually I believe that every atom possesses an ‘I’…however, only in animals is the ‘I’ obviously allowed to be ‘expressed’….The change, the difference in the behavior between animals and everything else began with vegetable plankton…That is, at first, plankton floated like a leaf on or beneath the sea or other bodies of water…they all were passive. Suddenly some plankton became active…they began to search for food…they began to avoid predators…According to scientists today… plankton such as these…that move…are not really animals…because they are not eucaryotes…technically, an organism must possess a nucleus, in which genetic material is kept…to be properly called an ‘animal’…However, this change from non-movement to movement…to propelled movement was astonishing…it was enough of a change for us to at least say that the new organism was at least…’animal-like’….It was the first indication that something…in the cell wall of the plankton…was, is ‘in charge’. Of course, the fact is…that something was in charge of the internal activity of the plankton…all along….But this tremendous change in outward behavior occurred with little change in bacterial DNA…Something was added that was of major significance in itself…What was added must have had abilities capabilities of its own..it had to be able to perceive, think, and act…it required only the addition of a few appendages in a plankton to empower these innate abilities…to transform these abilities operating in a minute way into a way that was larger…probably not a whole lot larger to begin with…Evolution transformed these minute abilities into empowered ones..into the outward behavior of an organism.
The ‘I’ in plankton somehow ‘called forth’ …allowed the formation of…brain. It allowed the evolution of the brain around that minute ‘I’… it allowed plant-like things to change into animal-like things…it allowed organisms to become active, aggressive…instead of passive…it increased organisms’ chances for survival.
When one speaks of cognition, one says that it is like turning on a light…when one speaks of intellect…of knowledge…we say..let there be light. That is why at first it was tempting to conjecture that ‘I’s are photons. This possibility is interesting…as photons are able to combine and become one…which would allow us to jump ahead in our thinking… individual ‘I’s might combine to become god-like ‘I’s in stars and nebulae… Our heads were spinning with the possibilities that light might have…if photons were ‘I’ particles.
But…photons don’t have the enough components that would be necessary to perceive, think, and act…the abilities that ‘I’s impart to plankton…It is more likely that ‘I’s are in atoms, and that every atom has one…If this is true, then atoms cannot become one larger atom…they can combine to form molecules but not one larger ‘I’…Thus, all atoms and ‘I’s…were one..only at the moment…of the Big Bang…before there were particles…before there were atoms….This is the conclusion you come to…God must have existed only at the very very very beginning…when you look for a big ‘I’…for a God.
So let us think this through…if a particle is to be an ‘I’ particle, then it must do more than sit there…’looking out’…It must perceive, think, and act. Thus an ‘I’ particle must have components linked to it that can perform three functions. Perhaps quarks in an atom could perform these functions. So an atom could have a particle yet to be discovered…maybe like a ‘p’ particle… that could be ‘looking out’…and is empowered by the three quarks that exist in every atom…The quarks…although two have similar spins…may perform different functions…thus, each atom may have the potential to do a lot…if the conditions are right. Why don’t we notice more of these powers…when we examine atoms?
Well, for one thing…all of this operates at a level beneath the radar…beneath the power of our instruments…this is stealth at its most challenging…that is why quantum mechanics has not progressed very much since 1925…We have a whole lot of trouble… studying the nuclei of atoms. We have made progress…discovered a lot of particles by using cyclotrons…that is, by smashing nuclei to pieces…we have ended up with a lot of particles but we have no idea what these particles do in the nuclei of atoms…Could an ‘I’ particle be hiding in the debris?… does the Cosmos require a prodigious amount of energy to produce an ‘I’ that we can see?
The question is…how can an atom express itself…display and utilize its powers…if electrons are in the way? The nucleus of an atom could communicate with the world around it…if the electron cloud around it…could be removed. This leads one to consider the possibility of ions…that is, atoms where electron fields have been stripped away…such stripping would be easier to secure completely in the instance of a hydrogen atom that has only one electron to get rid of…
A hydrogen ion!…Immediately things come to my mind…If one is looking at a plant…a vegetable plankton…there are already a lot of hydrogen ions at hand…primarily in the compartments and activity of photosynthesis… if one of these hydrogen ions in the photosynthesis compartments could have become ‘activated’ somehow…could have become ‘in charge’ …somehow…it would already have been connected to an ‘axon’…a column of hydrogen ions conveying energy through the modules….converted to convey information instead…this column of hydrogen ions would have already been connected to photosynthesis light receiving areas…thus, this hydrogen ion, this organism, would already possess a rudimentary ‘eye’! The conveyance of information by means of hydrogen ions in plankton would thus predate and be precursors for the courier ions in our brain…calcium, sodium, and potassium ions…
In paramecium…a spike of a brain has developed in its cell wall about what we can hypothesize to be an ‘I’ particle…From the time of paramecium on…brain continued to evolve to augment the innate powers of the ‘I’ particle…until it reached the extent of the wondrous mind of man and woman…
How is an ‘I’ added to living material to make an animal now? We don’t know…but it must be relative easy to do…witness: that each of 600 million sperm in one human emission all seem to possess an ‘I’. Do human eggs have ‘I’s? We know that human eggs can produce viable offspring without sperm…although they are barren. So each egg must possess an ‘I’. Therefore, the sperm and egg must both have ‘I’s…Why doesn’t the baby have two ‘I’s? Perhaps the two ‘I’s combine to become a single ‘I’ at an early state…which would have problems empirically…because two atoms cannot become one…More likely one ‘I’ is eliminated…by giving it an electron.
There is so much to think about…We have reason to believe that ‘I’s are eternal and that there is such a thing as conservation of ‘I’s…’I’s are never lost…they can be ‘constrained’…that is, their power limited by electron fields around the atom…or they can be ‘revealed’…when electron fields are removed…or no electrons are left at all…If an atom has more than one electron…things may end up in an ‘in-between’ situation…neither completely ‘concealed’ nor completely ‘revealed’…As one or more electrons may be removed…some electrons may still remain…As I say… the nucleus…would be partially ‘revealed’…This partial revelation may leave you with ions..such as exist in the human brain…like sodium, calcium, and potassium ions…which may result in partial ‘revelation’ of the powers of the abilities of the ‘I’. Instead of being ‘in charge’…an ion, with its associated electromagnetic waves…may have the power…to move information…transfer, deliver… ideas …in the electromagnetic waves that accompany the movement of ions…transfer ideas from perception areas, for example, to a hydrogen ion where it can be ‘thought’ about…which then can lead to ‘action’….
The fact is…if ions possess consciousness that is ‘revealed’…then ions in a star…can come close to being one…yet they have nuclei, therefore, they can never really be one…perhaps they can flash back and forth…from the ability to ‘look out’ as one…to individual points of consciousness…
All of this is very exciting…there are so many possibilities to think about…The major thing is…If all energy possesses I…if every atom possesses an ‘I’…then our entire concept of ‘materialism’…has changed.
So the difference between plant and animal is…plants have no ”I’ ‘looking out.’ But it appears that ‘I’s have been at work for a long time before the appearance of animal-like plankton….when one looks at the complexity of the inside of a human cell…reactions, interactions taking place at the rate of ten per second…It is true that enzymes increase the speed of reaction and interactions by one hundred millions of times….nevertheless, it is tempting to say that something is guiding all this…furthermore, the study of cells directed towards a cure for cancer has been slowed in several areas…these areas are where we would expect the ‘I’ particle to reside…Oh, I know… anything we do not understand we ascribe to God…we might as well ascribe it to an ‘I’ particle. But hear me out…cancer is too important a topic…to ignore possibilities.
Well, the activities of a cell are very complicated…but in my minibook, The ‘I’ and a Cure for Cancer, I proposed a model for this activity…then I presented a hypothesis as to where an ‘I’ particle would fit in….If an ‘I’ particle is in charge of the activity in a cell…if it identifies many of the particles and molecules moving about in the cell…and then ‘thinks’ and decides where they need to be sent, what additional molecules need to be made with the help of DNA…then this ‘I’ would be a position to identify particles and molecules which are related to the first phases of cancer…when such particles or molecules are identified…scientists can equip the ‘I’ with DNA to identify these early cancerous intrusions…and take action aganst them…or immediately cause the death of the cell…In this way, cancer could be stopped right at its inception…
As I say, there are several different disciplines and areas of thought that point to the possibility that all of this is true…it appears that the piling on of possibilities that this is true has increased the probability of its being true to about 60 or 70 percent…
Now if we go back further in the evolution of the cell…way back to the emergence of life…if we can find a possibility…in fact a strong possibility that hydrogen ions were involved in the creation of life…then the probability that hydrogen ions may possess consciousness…no, beyond that…that all atoms possess consciousness…would increase even more….
The Origin of Life and an Earlier Hypothesis
The thing is, not too long ago scientists took gases that were thought to be in the atmosphere 4 billion years ago…along with water in the ocean, zapped the concoction with high levels of energy…they used electricity, which acted like a lightning bolt…and poof they got amino acids.! So it appeared that life was easy to make way 4 billion years ago…
The gases that were thought to be in the atmosphere 4 billion years ago…were CO2, CH4, NH3, and H2….it was thought that these gases would have been absorbed into the sea…In water, simple organic molecules, that is, molecules containing carbon were likely to have been produced under primal conditions…where there was a constant massive assault by cosmic rays…there was no ozone layer in the atmosphere to protect the earth at this point…so there would have been a potent brew of chemicals in the ocean assaulted by a constant exposure to high energy electromagnetic radiation from the heavens…this would have presented a scenario in which life could have emerged…Scientists took these ideas and performed experiments…
In 1953, chemists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago reproduced the early atmosphere of earth that was believed to have existed 4 billion years ago…they did this by taking a chamber and placing only hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia inside it. They boiled the water and instead of exposing the mix to ultraviolet light, they used an electric discharge, to simulate lightning…After a week, they had a residue of compounds settled in their system…organic compounds had been formed! … most notably amino acids…they formed easily…That same year the structure of DNA was elucidated, revealing a way in which some compounds …nucleic acids…could replicate and keep life going…the base pairs within DNA are made of simple carbon based compounds with nitrogen and phosphorus thrown in….The components of DNA were later synthesized from these same gases that were thought to be present in the early atmosphere…
Many other scientists followed Urey and Miller’s lead…took those same chemicals that were thought to be in the primal atmosphere and created an array of chemicals essential to life that exists on earth today…Among these were HCHO (formaldehyde), HCOOH (formic acid), HCH (hydrogen cyanide)…these can readily undergo further reactions with H2O
.. to form CH3COOH (acetic acid), NH2CH2COOH (glycine), CH3CHCOOH (lactic acid) and NH2CHCOOH (alanine)
OH CH3
These molecules in turn can produce
NH – CH2COOH (sarcosine)
CH3
which can readily become
NH2 – C – NH2 (urea) and NH2CHCOOH (aspartic acid)
O CH2
COOH
These molecules presented an array of tools from which building blocks of life can be made …
Most scientists believe that life began with the help of RNA because RNA was a molecule that could act like an enzyme, that is, it could powerfully help shape patterns of chemical activity…and it had the ‘code’ of life within it…it ‘knew’ what shape molecules should take to create life….Yes, RNA and in fact DNA that later developed were breathtaking advances in life giving molecules…Yet there are two problems with this hypothesis…first as an enzyme, RNA only has the capacity to accelerate patterns that already exist…one is left with the standard reliance upon a random occurrence of events to form those patterns in the first place… wherewith the probability of randomness creating anything is very slim…in the face of the second law of thermodynamics….which states that anything that possesses organization is destined to lose that organization inexorably, continually…unless forces of some sort are exerted to the contrary…
Which brings us to the second problem…RNA is a very complicated and sophisticated molecule, the evidence for which does not emerge until approximately 3 billion years ago….what happened during the billion years of life before that?
It has always amazed me the confidence scientists have had that the delineation of the RNA and DNA genomes of humans would provide the breakthroughs, the cure-alls we are desperately seeking for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other deadly diseases…Basically, DNA is a memory…and while RNA can accelerate patterns of activity as we have said…it too is basically a memory…knowing what is in the medicine cabinet of the cell is very helpful in combating disease…but it is like being lost in a desert with a memory but with no will or ability to do anything with that memory….If we do not know how cells operate…we simply cannot rely upon randomness to supply information about the past or help with cures of horrible diseases in the future…We must know more and we must know now…
A major problem is that proteins seem to be of fundamental importance to life…yet they did not appear until after life had been around for one billion years…Why are proteins so important to life? The first step in the action of a protein is its binding to another molecule. Proteins as a class of macromolecules are unique in being able to recognize [that is, perceive] and interact [that is, think, decide, then take action] with a highly diverse collection of molecules. Scientists at the present time do not believe that chemicals can possess or express ‘intentionality’, that is, Will…that they cannot perceive, think, or act…however, they believe that some proteins, especially enzymes, which can act as catalysts in biological processes…can somehow act as if they can perceive, think, and act. Examples of how enzymes facilitate and accelerate biological interactions are… Myoglobin tightly binds a heme group when its polypeptide chain is partly folded…The acquisition of heme enables myoglobin to carry out its biological function, which is to reversibly bind O2. Proteins also combine with other proteins to produce highly ordered arrays, such as the contractile filaments in muscle…Another example is the binding of foreign molecules to antibody proteins which enables the immune system to distinguish between self and nonself…The fact is…enzymes help things happen…but most important to all of this is…speed….enzymes can accelerate activity trillions of times… hydrogen ion gradients can sit around in a tide pool for a while and do a little this and that…but without tremendous speed…the next level of life…that of organisms…simply cannot exist!
The question is…Amino acids and proteins were necessary for enzymes to appear…enzymes that are necessary for speed…if proteins did not show up until fairly late in the game…how were the basic functions of life first performed and by what molecules?
Building a Model for the Emergence of Life
The problem is… scientists now know that 4 billion years ago the
Earth’s atmosphere was primarily CO2…there is no way that amino acids and then a parade of proteins and RNA and DNA could have emerged initially from conditions in an atmosphere such as this..and there is no evidence that such molecules existed at the beginning. Also, most organisms that exist today possessing photosynthetic properties utilize regular daylight or infrared light..so the hypothesis that high frequencies of energy like cosmic rays or ultraviolet light or even lightning bolts were required to inititate life…is probably wrong…We need to go back to square one…
We are attempting to build a model depicting how life first arose. The first question we need to address is…What exactly is life?…
Life is nothing more than chemical reactions occurring in a pattern and then this pattern is replicated again and again…The normal reaction to this is to say No!…life is more than this…but then we are confusing consciousness with life…isn’t a tree just chemicals parading in a pattern over and over again?…Well, yes..and no…somehow trees bend and seen to reach for the light…and animals go beyond that…Right…animals possess consciousness….that is more than a parade of chemicals…unless the chemicals have consciousness within them…this is the crux of the matter….
For now we are just looking at patterns…if we are looking for the origin of life…we are looking for a way that chemicals started a pattern and then replicated it…So how do we go about building a model for what might have happened 3.9 billion years ago? First, there must been a way for chemicals to be isolated in a space separate from the rest of the ocean but a part of it…Scientists believe that isolation by means of a cell wall was essential at this very first stage…I do not think a wall built by the entity in question is essential…chemicals can be isolated by many physical means in or on the edges of the ocean…in sands or in tide pools….
Second, in this isolated space there had to be molecules that were present routinely in the ocean at the time….
Then what happened? What was the first step…that started all of this…on the road towards Life?
Well, we have gone through this before…but it is worth repeating …About fifteen years ago I got this idea that we can learn more about consciousness if we go back in evolutionary history to when vegetable turned into animal…something was floating like leaf in the ocean and boom!..it began to move…away from what might eat it to what it might eat instead….this evidently happened quickly without much of an addition in DNA…something was added…and because everything in the universe is a particle, probably a particle or group of particles was added…at first I thought it might have been light…as it turns out that guess probably was not as bad as I then thought…we will return to this thought…the problem with light with a photon is that whatever was added must have been able to perceive, think and act…a photon doesn’t seem to be capable of all of that…an atom is more likely…as there are three quarks, each of which might serve a different series of duties…but an atom is a center of consciousness why haven’t we seen or heard more…probably because with electrons about it…it is ‘concealed’, cut off from the world about it…if electrons are stripped away…it would become an ion and it might be ‘revealed’…able to interact with other things….
As I say…we must stop being afraid of the word ‘intentionality’ when we talk about consciousness in the universe….sure it is weird to be saying that a rock has potential intentionality…potential Will…but we have accept the fact that the entire subject of consciousness is weird…everyone of us is ‘looking out’…we think we are the center of the universe…it appears that every animal ‘looks out” in the same way even if every animal is not equipped with a brain to recognize that fact….
Well, as we saw before… all of this led to the hypothesis that a hydrogen ion would be the most likely candidate to be an ‘I’…the seat of consciousness.. For hydrogen ions to have participated in the creation of life…three things would have to be true. In general..First, there would have to have been a bountiful supply of hydrogen ions around four billion years ago…as we have said, in an isolated, protected place where life could emerge…. Second…there would have to have been pathways over which, through which, by means of which chemicals could have been paraded by hydrogen ions to be perceived, for the ions to think about, and then for action to be taken to process these chemicals and create the first life….Then third, using these first simple chemicals that were on some sort of pathway to and from hydrogen ions, these specks of consciousness must have been able to have formed in an easy way molecules that could generate and store energy that would be required to produce and sustain life…and simultaneously be building structures leading to the formation of the first cells…To determine how these three things happened is a challenge as all of this occurred 4 billion years ago…still there is hope that there are vestiges of this early work among chemicals and patterns of chemical reactions in cells today…as they say in the field of geology…what is occurring today, has occurred in the past, and shall continue to occur in the future…The fact is…it seems that once certain patterns have appeared in the emergence of life…these patterns have tended to remain as they were, or have been altered slightly to create new patterns…in ways that the evolution of the cell can be discerned…
In more detail…First we must find that it was possible that hydrogen ions were in abundance in oceans 4 billon years ago…then we must consider what were the five major abilities and objectives hydrogen ions must have possessed and pursued to create life?
First…Shapes…they must been able to identify things…they may have done this by identifying structures….the three dimensional array of molecules is how chemicals are identified…which is called ‘conformation’…the relationship between the three-dimensional structure of molecules and their biological activity…for scientists shape of molecules seems to be very important in the identification and interaction among molecules.
Yet there is another possibility operating within the purview of identification and interaction of molecules…in the human brain, if a hydrogen ion is in charge…then information is paraded by it by means of ions moving in neurons…how would the ion receive information from these ions…well, ions flowing in neurons generate waves electrical and magnetic…it seems likely that the hydrogen ion is ‘reading’ the information directly from these waves…thus at the very beginning of life, hydrogen ions probably identified molecules about it in the same way…first in a hydrogen atom with electrons the nucleus communicates with its electrons in this wave oriented manner…then when electrons are removed, the ion is able to perceive, identify molecules about it in the same manner….via waves generated by all atomic activity….
Second…Energy…hydrogen ions must have been able to make things happen…To create, to have an impact on things, one needs energy…so when they were pushing things around…one had to have found, obtained energy and somehow stored it somewhere and then was able to grab it and use it when it was needed…that is, there must have been the capability of generation and storage of metabolic energy…
Third…Structure…as we have said…if hydrogen ions are to do something…they need a laboratory…a place where chemicals can be isolated from the surrounding world….structure is needed for particles and molecules to interact with hydrogen ions….structure is also required in order that things that are created can be preserved… progress can be made without loss of things that are built…As I have said…scientists think that a cell wall was one of the first things built…I think that all of this took place between grains of sand or in pocket of water in tide pools or somewhere…forget a cell wall for a moment…say we have an isolated space…one still needs structure…a cell is filled with filaments …particles and molecules are moved by force along lines, along highways from the outside world along paths inside the isolated space…where hydrogen ions can examine particles and molecules and identify them and make decisions…we can use that over there …we have too much of this…we need more of something else…so pathways were number one…these pathways would have made it possible for hydrogen ions to parade past…or have molecules parade past them…in this way the hydrogen ions could have worked with different molecules….
Eventually, amino acids were created for this purpose… created by hydrogen ions…these worked very well for this purpose…we need to know how they worked so we can see if there were counterparts in the very first early stages that performed the same functions…amino acids have one part of them that is the same…to which are attached a little this and a little that which gives them a shape which can be used to identify them and a shape that can be used to build things…by combining with other amino acids…and eventually amino acids were used to build proteins..and DNA and RNA were built to be memories…that is they were patterns, templates that could be used to assist in the building of these proteins…Were there any things that might have corresponded to all of this…at the very first earliest stage of life? That is, if amino acids did not exist at the very very beginning…there must have been something like them which performed similar functions…we must find these…
So to return to what hydrogen ions would have had to possess to do their work…
Fourth…memory…storage, transmission, and expression of genetic material…no..at this early stage there must have been a counterpart to what later developed into genetic memory…what might have worked would have been molecules built to last a while, placed in a sequence, which would have allowed hydrogen ions to pass by them or among them and complete tasks in a given order…Again what would have structures like this been built of in this very very early stage of life?
Fifth…a model for cognition would have had to have been made…along the lines of a tiny brain…at this very early stage of life….there must have been ways for particles and molecules to be perceived… particles and molecules entering an isolated area must have been moved somehow into the vicinity of the hydrogen ions where the hydrogen ions could identify, think, make decisions, and then have a memory that is a collection of building blocks at hand to make what is needed and a pathways to deliver what is made to where it is needed…this is molecular physiology…the interaction, conformation, and metabolism in physiological processes…these are fancy words for…perceive, think, and act…As we have said…very important to all of this would have been the building of structures that assisted hydrogen ions in performing things…and a means of acquiring the energy necessary to build and move these things…
So if consciousness was there when life was first formed…we should look for hydrogen ions…and we should look for chemicals that could have been formed easily from gases in the air that can be absorbed by the ocean and water in the ocean itself…chemicals that could easily be made into structures…structures that could aid the work of hydrogen ions…Well, it is a great help for a scientists to know what he or she is looking for…for decades answers may sit right before their eyes without progress because scientists are not asking the right questions… We know what we are looking for….
Here we are looking for interactions and reactions among particles and molecules that may have taken place very early in the creation of life and are ‘held over’ in later stages of the development of life….
Light Created Life!
So we know what we are looking for. First, we are looking for hydrogen ions. The early atmosphere was made up mostly of carbon dioxide, along with tiny amounts of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, and water vapor.. And of course, there was the ocean…there was water…lots of water…
So the first thing…as we say…4 billion years ago there was a plenitude of two things on earth….there was a lot of ocean and a lot of atmosphere…the former of course was composed mostly of H20…and the latter was composed mainly of CO2…It just so happens when these water and air are combined we reaped the following…
H2O + CO2 yields HCO3- + H+
We see this reaction everyday nowadays…this reaction is initiated, accelerated, and proliferated millions maybe trillions of times by the action of enzymes in our bodies every day to acquire hydrogen ions necessary for performing important functions in our bodies…Of course this reaction occurred at a much slower pace at the beginning of life….It is what we have been looking for…a gas in the air plus water yields a potent source for a surfeit of hydrogen ions.
Then there is a second thing…once hydrogen ions are generated in water, of course there is a propensity for these ions to immediately combine with other hydrogen ions and create hydrogen gas…However, H2 when it is produced in water is never stabilized…it readily dissociates into an electron plus a proton (that is, e– + H+). In this way hydrogen gas alternated with hydrogen ions in a perpetual vacillation back and forth…a pattern replicated over and over…this was the earliest form of chemical replication…this was the earliest form of life!…Hydrogen ions vacillating back and forth between H2 and H+ plus an electron…would have formed gradients with concentrations of H+ appearing in isolated contained areas….as I say, this flashing back and forth from H2 to H+ would have been a rudimentary sort of life…a pattern replicated…with consciousness embedded within it!
However, for replication to take place in a more predictable manner… structures had to be formed to help guide this flow of chemical reactions….It appears that the first structures that hydrogen ions created to assist in this replication were….sugars…
We saw that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plus water gives us a wealth of hydrogen ions….Well, carbon dioxide plus water…plus light… gives us…sugar!
Witness!
CO2 + H2O + photons yields [CH2O] + O2
carbohydrate oxygen
From the same folks that gave us hydrogen ions, with the help of light gave us sugars…sugars give us building blocks to aid replication of chemical reactions… plus sugars can store and move energy from one place to another …there is a problem with the breakdown of sugars to obtain energy as glycolysis takes a great amount of time without enzymes…thus there would have been great pressure for hydrogen ions to create amino acids and proteins to create enzymes…that is, catalysts that could accelerate biological interactions and reactions many many times…thus there was a need for nitrogen and phosphorous…to form enzymes…or rudimentary nucleotides could have been made…because RNA can act as an enzyme…
Perhaps one recognizes this pattern…this creation of structures and movement of energy…why, it is the essence of a process rife on our planet filled with life today…it is photosynthesis….yes, it appears photosynthesis was there at the very beginning of creation of life…Yes, light indeed… did help create life!
Sugars! The reason that molecules are ‘organic’ is that they have carbon as an important part of their composition…often part of their backbones… Carbon is ionic and can easily break apart and combine again… often in long chains…called ‘polymers’…polymers are the secret to life…molecules can build to immense size then collapse quickly…chains of reactions can occur quite quickly and easily….
So… the ocean was filled with H+ 3 billion years ago…which is what we were looking for….In addition, photosynthesis seems to have been there at the very beginning,…Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms…some organisms have processes which seem to be closer to what was happening at the very beginning…photosynthesis is used to convert light energy into chemical energy…By light is meant any frequency of radiation from infrared to ultraviolet…most photosynthesis on earth is now performed with the assistance of light that we can see …however, some organisms use infrared radiation..half of the radiation that hits the earth is infrared light…so it is reasonable to think that the first life used infrared light….this chemical energy was stored in the sugar molecules that photosynthesis created, then transported to other areas to be released later to perpetuate replication at first…later to feed an organisms’ activities…As we have said…at this very very very early stage…breaking sugars down to obtain energy would have taken long periods of time…prompting the initiation of action for hydrogen ions to really change things..obtaining nitrogen and phosphorous to build amino acids, proteins, and ultimately enzymes to move the energy process faster…..
All of this means that life had to have first occurred near air in the ocean where water and CO2 could combine to produce hydrogen ions and sugars…however, since the breaking down of sugars was necessary to obtain energy to accomplish things…it is possible that once life was begun it may have moved to the bottom of the sea near vents that exuded gases from the center of the earth… nitrogen and phosphorus could be obtained…
Our model then, simply…is…hydrogen ions arising naturally from a reaction between water and carbon dioxide…followed by a process called carbon fixation which produced a three-carbon sugar product…which in turn provided structures and means to move energy…obtaining energy from sugar molecules was a slow process…which led to the push to create molecules like amino acids which could be used to build proteins that could speed processes and eventually replace the rudimentary structures made of sugar with stronger longer lasting structrues made of proteins.
How Do We Get to Amino Acids?
So we have seen that the push was on to create molecules that could speed the generation of energy…how was this done?…Scientists generally agree that the first life on earth appeared sometime before 3.9 billion years ago…The origins of life are known to have come after the presence of liquid water on earth… Once large pools of water had formed…it was possible for life to exist. Cynobacteria, some of the earliest types of procaryotic bacteria… have left remains, which have been found in Australia dated back to between 3.4 to 2.8 billion years ago…Ancient as their origins are…these bacteria were already biologically complex, with cell walls protecting their protein-producing DNA…This was one billion years after life first emerged.
So what happened during these one billion years?
Well, we know that hydrogen ions were present at the emergence of life… and they were working with sugars right away in a photosynthesis sort of way…
A stream of hydrogen ions was not a stream of entities operating all alone…there was a lot of interaction in two respects…First, a stream of hydrogen ions possessed consciousness…flashing back and forth from being ‘revealed’ and active in the world around them…to being ‘concealed’ as hydrogen gas…these ions were able to communicate with each other…process the building of structures, working one after the other in a coordinated manner…when a hydrogen molecule was H+ + e- …that is, plus an electron… it possessed a wave which could move information along a line of ions….patterns could ve created and then replicated…After a time, other hydrogen gradients emerged which could compete with the original ones…they could try new things and evolution would reward operations which worked the best…
It is possible that the famous ‘will to survive’ that all life seems to exhibit from the most minute of bacteria to the largest of beasts…may have begun in the hydrogen ion gradient….perhaps when a nucleus is ‘revealed’…the experience is exhilarating and an ion is reluctant to lose this stance toward the world…even when one ion is in command, the other ions in a gradient may take pride in participating in their roles in perpetuating life…In the end, when all ions become part of complete atoms again…these nuclei settle in a peaceful, blissful existence that was never to be feared or deprecated…until the opportunity arises again for the ‘I’ to exhibit its awesome ability for impact….
But how do we get from sugars to proteins…well, it took a billion or so years…so it wasn’t like the transition took place right away…
Well, we cannot fill all the gaps…but we do know a few things…For example, once organizational tools were built out of sugar…they were elaborated and made stronger, better, more efficient…DNA and RNA which appeared later are constructed and elaborated in a way that mimics how sugars elongate and elaborate themselves…The addition of nitrogen and phosphorous to the recipe for building structures made of sugars was crucial…they have given biological structures resilience, durability, and speed in replication….they have allowed life to spread like a blanket around, across the planet so that every square millimeter is inundated with trillions of organisms…and filled the atmosphere with oxygen… So is there any evidence that nitrogen and phosphorous were available in large quantities during the one billion year period when the evolution from hydrogen ions and sugars to proteins occurred?
First of all…in life today nitrogen and phosphorous are still difficult for life to grab ahold of…for this reason in every sequence of reactions in which these elements are utilized…they are recycled back to be used again…some life gains energy and structures from light…but most life devours other life…
thereby acquiring these crucial elements…Even within an organism, proteins are constantly falling apart, yet amino acids tend to remain in tack…they are also kept within the confines of the organism available for further use when new proteins are assembled…this preserves these crucial elements also…
Second, in addition to the recycling of these elements…additional supplies of them is required from time to time for life to survive…Were nitrogen and phosphorous available in the oceans when life moved from a sugar based existence to one with amino acids and proteins?…
As far as nitrogen is concerned…scientists have found well-preserved rocks that have been associated with early evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis 2.7 years ago…the rock samples showed the first direct evidence of the build up of a large pool of ammonium in and around the time that life was utilizing it in creating proteins…this ammonium would have provided an ample source of nitrogen to fuel the early biosphere…
The availability of phosphorous has not been documented as of this date. .It is the one piece of the puzzle still missing.
In this way, our research hypothesizes that the parade allowing the emergence of life proceeded as follows….H+ gradients flashing back and forth from H2 to H+ plus an electron was the first life…such concentrations of H+ is rife in life today to the extent that they are a major signature of life….These gradients utilized sugars for structures and energy…which eventually led to the creation of amino acids, then proteins, then nucleotides…which allowed the production of eucaryotic cells and ultimately, multicellular life.
The I and Tools
One thing we learn from archaeologists…the same thing that we have learned from pragmatists and a psychologist like William James…the hallmark of consciousness is the appearance of tools….good ideas are the ones that work…that is, the best ideas are tools…Humans with their great minds are able to innovate and create tools fashioned from the natural world around them…and create things that have never been seen before…However, we must not forget that things like instinct and parts of animal bodies…actually parts of anything that we deem to attach the appellation of ‘life’…all of these things are tools…relics from the past…evidence of consciousness constructing things that ‘work’…building things all the way from the atomic to the macro level that can impact, move the world around it…the world that surrounds such a miracle of creative ability….
Randomness creates nothing…as is stated by the second law of thermodynamics…Systems which display an organization can only degrade…never build back up by themselves…It may be a rule universal in nature…that wherever, whenever organization is seen…consciousness at some level of Cosmic power has been at work….this does not mean that there is an old man with a beard, a kindly father sweetly at work watching oer our world and our cosmos….No, in fact it would be the Cosmos, itself…with a capital C indicating consciousness of the grandest inclusive, space commanding sort…that is building itself…every day…
All is spreading outwards…outwards…always…towards dissipation, disorganization, and death of intention….
No!…I would never bet in favor of such an ultimate dissolution of things…Where there is will there is a way….Where there is Will…there are tools….there is hope….there is Law…there is Love….there is Cosmos…there is Consciousness…with a capital C……
Conclusion
As I say…we must stop being afraid of the word ‘intentionality’ when we talk about phenomena in the universe….sure, it is weird to be saying that a rock has potential intentionality…potential Will…but we have to accept the fact that the entire subject of consciousness is weird…everyone of us is ‘looking out’…We each think we are the center of the universe…it appears that every animal ‘looks out” in the same way even if every animal is not equipped with a brain to recognize that fact….The fact is… every cell in our body…every microorganism seems to have consciousness operating at the atomic level within it….
For example, as we have said…one question is…how did life graduate from H+ and sugars to amino acids and proteins? Well, as we have said…concentrations of hydrogen ions were the first life…they were conscious, able to work together to construct tools…once organizational tools were built…they were elaborated made stronger, better, more efficient…As we have said…DNA and RNA are constructed and elaborated in a way that mimics how sugars elongate and elaborate themselves…The addition of nitrogen and phosphorous to the recipe for building structures made of sugars…has given life resilience, durability, and speed in replication….has allowed life to spread across the planet so that every square millimeter is inundated with trillions of organisms…..The five second rule…rubbish…There is an entire world that exists near the atomic level…there is a minute dust that covers the planet and embedded within that dust is life…bacteria, microbes far below the visibility of the eye…once something touches that dust, bacteria is transferred….just one piece of evidence of the pervasiveness, durability, intransigence, the power of Life….
Humans may have the power to pollute their world… perhaps even annihilate themselves…but most life lives beneath the radar…a world of life that is stealthy…as far as our perception is concerned…Sure, ants and cockroaches may still live after a nuclear holocaust…but the truth is…Life has always really existed in full bloom, in extravagance at, near the atom level…near the molecular level….and every star is filled with hydrogen ions…that flash to and from one great I to the many…this is a replication that is eternal…this is a replication that is always…the sure sign… of tools….the sure sign…of consciousness at work…
In our introduction, we said that several disciplines and areas of thought when brought together increase the probability that the hypothesis that every atom possesses consciousness is true. Now we can add one more area of thought…the emergence of Life…this increases the probability that our hypothesis is true to about 85 percent….As we have said, there is the possibility of empirical verification of the existence of the ‘I’ particle…from experiments at CERN utilizing the Large Hadron Collider….if what we are looking for is not demolished in the process….People say the world is not ready for such speculations as are provided here….We say we must fight cancer now….in a most powerful way …we cannot wait another thousand years until scientists are able to put theological concerns aside and finally confront a Cosmos where the most amazing things are true…There are miracles occurring everyday…as every person is able to ‘look out’…There is room for more miracles…if we allow them to be…in our science….
There is one last thing…scientists feel they are close to understanding not only what atom nuclei are composed of…but how these constituent parts operate…how these parts work together… As I have said, atom smashers… smash atoms to smithereens…most of the knowledge we seek is obliterated…there are other more clever ways we are developing that we hope will reveal more about this tiny tiny but most important world…as the entire Cosmos was is composed originally at this level….the most important operations work at this level…But wait…now there may be another way to assist in this investigation of this invisible world…Each of us possesses an ‘I’…and this ‘I’ is ‘looking out’ from the center…of an atom…Might we not merely ‘look out’…This would be a most clever form of investigation…What do we see…do we see ‘strings’… multiverses? …quarks…or do we just see…energy?…perhaps the basis of everything is…as it was in the beginning…entirely composed of energy….encapsulated, parceled out, given different responsibilities and powers…but just energy…and we can see that…we can see everything we seek…by merely…’looking out’…examining the nuclei of atoms…from the inside…out….
Bibliographical Notes
So if consciousness was there when life was first formed…we should look for hydrogen ions…and we should look for chemicals that can be formed easily from gases in the air that can be absorbed by the ocean and water in the ocean itself…well, it is a great help for a scientists to know what he or she is looking for…for decades answers may sit right before their eyes without progress because scientists are not asking the right questions…we know what we are looking for….
The major sources we used for information were texts all of which are no doubt out of print now…which are no doubt replaced with newer editions and selections….Our hypothesis here was built not from ideas found in original pieces of work by other investigators….they were built from facts found in any basic textbook in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry and cellular investigation….what has led our investigation are not new facts per se although new things are being discovered every day…it is more what the investigator is looking for…things that have been there all along…if one were looking for them…if one were allowed to look for them…
Some of the sources that were used in this minibook were the following…
For general information the following were essential…
Molecular Biology of the Cell…Third Edition...by Bruce Alberts, et al…(New York: Garland Publishing, 1994)….
Biochemistry, Fourth Edition by Lubert Stryer….(New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1995)
Chemistry…Third Edition, by Steven S. Zumdahl (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1993)
For information concerning specific items and areas concerning cell activity and documented evidence concerning early manifestations of life, the following were used….
Wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis earlyearthcentral.com/early_life_page.html\
https://www.physicsoftheuiniverse.com/topics_life_early.html
http:phy.org/news/2017_11_life_limited_phosphorous_recycling_ suppressed.html
https://bioengineer.org/aminonium_fertilized_early_life_on_earth/