Using Arsenic to Build Cells

This article http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/nasa-finds-arsenic-life-form/, talks about a group of scientists that coaxed a bacterium to use arsenic in place of phosphorus as an elemental building block. There is some debate regarding the findings, but if the bacteria really are using arsenic as a building block, then this would be a scientific first. Arsenic is right below phosphorus on the periodic table of elements, which means that the two elements share some characteristics, although arsenic would normally destroy any cell it came into contact with. To be honest, I wasn't too surprised at the finding. It fits with my concept of an alternative world in which the infinite possible permutations of life are allowed to exist due to a hypothetical absence of influence. The bacteria normally exist in an extreme environment in which certain mutations were strongly selected for, then the scientists altered their environment further, allowing other changes to occur that might not have normally taken place. It raises the question of what other weird things life could do in an artificial environment in which the normal rules of biology are tweaked.

Erasing Our Alternative Selves: The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness

Outside of the world of thought experiments in which we can imagine the absence of any sort of influence, there are forces that erase certain possible variations of the original cue ball. The particular set of forces that acted on the subsequent variations of the original cue ball is what is known as the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, or EEA. If the sum of what we are is simply the result of purposeless variation that hasn't been erased, then in order to understand the nature of an organism, human or otherwise, we need to recognize what those erasing forces were. Although it might be expedient to exclude physical forces that are common to everything within the biosphere, I don't want to do that; I want to start with the original cue ball and determine exactly how it resulted in the variations at the outer edge of the Great Ring of Cue Balls.

We can start with the forces that erased possible variations on the bee, for example, just to keep things kind of simple. Possibilities are: extremes of temperature, gravity, radiation from the sun, availability and nature of building materials (elements like hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.), presence of predators, particularities of food sources (e.g. shape of flowers), wind, rain, earth's electromagnetic field, etc. The list goes on and on. In the original thought experiment, a bee can exist that weighs 12 tons and uses argon, helium, and gold as the building material for its body, but in reality a bee can't be 12 tons because it would fall straight out of the sky. Nor could it procure enough calories to sustain such a large body. Nor could that body be made from argon, helium, and gold because these elements are too scarce (plus their natures don't lend themselves to the reactions that allow for life, though I'm not sure why). Anyway, the bee as we know it is a pared down version of a huge range of theoretical versions that couldn't exist due to the particular environmental forces in which it exists.

That set of forces that erased all those theoretical variations is what is known as the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. This is a key concept in understanding human nature. Just like the bee, we are only one version of a huge range of theoretical versions of our alternative selves. So I want to pose the question: what are some of the forces that have erased our alternative selves?

In Order to Understand Human Nature...

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection is often misunderstood, mistranslated, and mistaught, in spite of the fact that, at the most basic and abstract level, it is simply an exercise in logical thinking. The real difficulty in understanding the process occurs when particular expressions of the theory require that multiple influential factors with multiple potential avenues of effect be considered simultaneously. Fortunately though, the hard stuff is rooted in a simple idea.

In explaining evolution, I want to be sure to avoid the fallacy of reification that even seasoned biologists commit when speaking of, and presumably thinking of, evolution. Reification (from the latin res thing combined with facere to make) is the tendency to attribute some sort of intentionality to any concept, object, entity, etc. in spite of the fact that the thing may be completely unconscious, lifeless, and inanimate. Applied to evolution, it is often suggested that, for example, “evolution designed tigers with stripes so that they could remain hidden in the broken light of the forest.” In fact, “evolution” is not any sort of real object or entity with the intention to create things, with stripes or without stripes. Evolution is a process that has no desire, need, intentionality, etc. My following argument is that the process of evolution by natural selection doesn’t actually create anything, rather it is only a pattern of deletions that leaves in its wake a whole slew of unique species.

To begin with, you need to understand three things: replication, variation, and conservation. That’s it. If you can understand replication, variation, and conservation, then you can understand evolution. Imagine this: start with infinite space occupied by exactly nothing. Then add to that any undefined object; it could be anything, it could be a cue ball if you want. The only requirement is that, if you’re going to use a cue ball in this scenario, the cue ball be capable of replication. Impossible in reality (I think), but in this thought experiment it’s allowed. For the sake of ease of understanding, let’s just say that the cue ball only has the opportunity to make two copies of itself. After that it just sits there in space. The two copies then occupy a sort of static planetary or atomic orbit around the original cue ball. The second-generation cue balls are almost exact copies of the original cue ball. In other words they have conserved the traits of the original cue ball. But the second-generation is not copied with one-hundred percent fidelity. There has been the slightest bit of variation in the copying process. In this first instance of copying the original cue ball, we can already identify the three main requirements for evolution: the cue ball has been replicated, most of its original characteristics have been conserved in the second-generation, and there has been a minute amount of variation from the original cue ball to the second-generation.

At this point it isn’t necessary to understand why the cue ball replicates, why there is variation, and why there is conservation. In order to understand the process of evolution, it is only necessary to understand that these occurrences are inherent to the nature of the molecules of which the cue ball is composed.

Next, each of the two second-generation cue balls make a copy of themselves just like the original cue ball did. Again most of the original characteristics are conserved across generations, but also there isn’t one-hundred percent fidelity in the process of copying. This process of replication with conservation and variation continues with each new cue ball making two copies of itself, generation after generation, creating an ever-expanding series of orbits.

One of the idiosyncrasies of this thought experiment is that in this hypothetical infinite space, none of the cue balls have any influence on each other. In fact it would be easiest in understanding the process to try to imagine that there is no such thing as cause and effect. Things just are.

If you let this thought experiment play itself out for billions and billions of generations, so that there are billions and billions of rings surrounding the original cue ball, you might see that the cue balls at the outer rings don’t look anything like the original cue ball in the middle. If you let it play out even further, if you let it play out infinitely, then every possible expression of life would come into being. With only the three original ingredients of replication, variation, and conservation, you could create Michael Jackson with an elephant trunk instead of a nose; a hippopotamus that sequestered helium in a subcutaneous pouch, thereby allowing it to float through the air like a blimp; you could create a platypus; you could even create humans, all thanks to replication, variation, and conservation. No intentionality necessary.

We might have a hard time imagining the strange things that could have been, but that’s only because we have little raw material from which to construct these strange beasts; even our wildest imagined monsters are a play on already existing creatures: a minotaur is a mix between a bull and a human, a dragon is an ornate and exaggerated lizard. If beings in some other galaxy with different degrees of physical forces working on them were to see the creatures of earth, they might be completely incredulous. If their planet had greater gravity, they might think it impossible that a giraffe could hold up such a long neck. Or if they had lower levels of light than us, they might not believe that we had eyes that used photoreceptors and not radioreceptors as a primary means of navigating their world.

All these strange creatures can only exist in a hypothetical vacuum in which there are no sources of influence, no cause and effect, no natural selectors. The point I’m trying to make with this thought experiment is that the way in which we normally think about evolution by natural selection is flawed. When considering the vast number of species on earth and their particular traits we ask ourselves “how do all these species exist?” or “why does this particular trait exist?” The answer usually looks something like “this species exists because it was good at catching gazelles,” or “tigers have stripes because they help the tiger hide.” I think these answers commit the fallacy of reification; they invoke an entity with intentionality, whether that be a god or some sort of disembodied evolutionary entity.

My argument is that all these species and their traits were created as a logical result of an original molecule or compound that replicated with variation and conservation. Natural selection isn’t the creative process, rather it is the destructive one. It is the name that we give to the pattern of accumulated deletions of similar traits. If we think about it in terms of the planetary cue ball model, the deletions would be the erasure of certain degrees of the circle of rings. Hypothetically the eraser could be anything, but the point is that it erases large portions of the model, leaving the impression of a lack of gradation between what is left.

This is the starting point for analyzing every problem of evolutionary psychology. Instead of asking “how was this created?” we should ask “why wasn’t this erased?” The difference between those two questions may seem inconsequential, but I think in considering the more complex questions of the evolution of the human mind, it is an essential distinction.