Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction

[Ella S.]

Well one can push any idea to the point of absurdity or irrelevance, sure. Or seek to apply it in an arena where it doesn't really say much.

But key to Rovelli's ontological premise, is the view that the world is populated not by objects, but by events. Even rock, he suggests, is a temporary convergence of forces maintaining equilibrium for what, in the context of universal space and time, is little more than a moment. Consistency, in other words, is only temporary. All that is solid melts into air (he quotes this line from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' quite frequently).

Interestingly, this might be the best way of approaching quantum systems. They start to become less about discrete particles and more about how waveforms interact with one another, often without having any certain value of their own to the point they might as well only be defined by their relationships with one another.

I'm not a quantum physicist, so I apologize if that's incredibly ignorant on my part, but that's what I've gleaned on the subject.

 

[exchemist]

I am not in the least bit hostile toward science. Only toward scientism: the phony characterization and inaccurate adulation of science.

Why do you think we want to know those things? What do you think we do with that information?

It's to satisfy our curiosity about nature. It's not to "do" anything with it in particular. It's the same drive, from curiosity, that motivates the historian to research his or her chosen subject. It's just that scienstists are curious about aspects of nature.

To give an example, @RestlessSoul has just quoted, in this thread, from Carlo Rovelli's recent book "Helgoland", which is about the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics. This book radiates a curiosity about nature. There is nothing here about "control". Similarly, when I encountered electrocyclic reactions in organic chemistry, I was filled with delight that we could explain why carbon rings open with both sides moving in the same direction, or with them moving in opposite directions just depending on whether the bond is broken with heat or with light. It's because heat is a symmetric influence, while light is antisymmetric (I won't go into the details - it's more QM). That sort of thing is just marvellous to understand. It expands your mind to know that we can know why that sort of thing happens.

 

[PureX]

It's to satisfy our curiosity about nature. It's not to "do" anything with it in particular. It's the same drive, from curiosity, that motivates the historian to research his or her chosen subject. It's just that scienstists are curious about aspects of nature.

To give an example, @RestlessSoul has just quoted, in this thread, from Carlo Rovelli's recent book "Helgoland", which is about the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics. This book radiates a curiosity about nature. There is nothing here about "control". Similarly, when I encountered electrocyclic reactions in organic chemistry, I was filled with delight that we could explain why carbon rings open with both sides moving in the same direction, or with them moving in opposite directions just depending on whether the bond is broken with heat or with light. It's because heat is a symmetric influence, while light is antisymmetric (I won't go into the details - it's more QM). That sort of thing is just marvellous to understand. It expands your mind to know that we can know why that sort of thing happens.

You are ignoring the obvious ... why humans are so curious about the mechanisms of physics in the first place. You deliberately stop short of considering that question. And to answer it, all you have to do is look to what we do with that information when we get it. At why it's important to us.

 

[RestlessSoul]

You are ignoring the obvious ... why humans are so curious about the mechanisms of physics in the first place. You deliberately stop short of considering that question. And to answer it, all you have to do is look to what we do with that information when we get it.

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that humanity has, collectively, been involved in a centuries old struggle to manipulate and control nature, I think you do individual scientists a great disservice if you claim that they are motivated solely by a desire to serve that purpose. Great minds like those of Kepler, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein were driven, I think, by the desire to extend the frontiers of human knowledge. To 'lift a corner of the veil', as Einstein said of French physicist Louis De Broglie.

 

[Audie]

Well I was responding to your analogy of a painting being pigment on parchment, which I found quite interesting; I agree with the response of the poster who replied that it is more than that, in particular that the qualities and meaning assigned to it by the observer transform it into something else.

The painting is not affected by anyone's opinions about it.
The only effect is on the mind of he who regards said painting.

This simple obvious fact was hardly worth stating,
and still less worth disputing in some way.

 

[Audie]

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that humanity has, collectively, been involved in a centuries old struggle to manipulate and control nature, I think you do individual scientists a great disservice if you claim that they are motivated solely by a desire to serve that purpose. Great minds like those of Kepler, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein were driven, I think, by the desire to extend the frontiers of human knowledge. To 'lift a corner of the veil', as Einstein said of French physicist Louis De Broglie.

wf ( winner frubal)

 

[PureX]

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that humanity has, collectively, been involved in a centuries old struggle to manipulate and control nature, I think you do individual scientists a great disservice if you claim that they are motivated solely by a desire to serve that purpose. Great minds like those of Kepler, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein were driven, I think, by the desire to extend the frontiers of human knowledge. To 'lift a corner of the veil', as Einstein said of French physicist Louis De Broglie.

If a theist were to suggest that this innate human curiosity were God given, the scientism cultists would be screaming up, down, and sideways about how our curiosity is the result of the evolutionary rewards (control over our environment) it gave us, and nothing else. Yet now, when I suggest that our innate curiosity is fundamentally self-serving, they become incredulous because they want to pretend science is some elevated, mystical truth-seeking endeavor.

How ironic.

 

[Audie]

Well I was responding to your analogy of a painting being pigment on parchment, which I found quite interesting; I agree with the response of the poster who replied that it is more than that, in particular that the qualities and meaning assigned to it by the observer transform it into something else.

Tell me how, in the painting, one atom, one photon of reflected light is so much
as twitched, let alone " transformed" by your perception of its qualities.

 

[Audie]

Well one can push any idea to the point of absurdity or irrelevance, sure. Or seek to apply it in an arena where it doesn't really say much.

But key to Rovelli's ontological premise, is the view that the world is populated not by objects, but by events. Even rock, he suggests, is a temporary convergence of forces maintaining equilibrium for what, in the context of universal space and time, is little more than a moment. Consistency, in other words, is only temporary. All that is solid melts into air (he quotes this line from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' quite frequently).

From a geologists pov, being that geologists understand,deep time,
a rock is as ephemeral as a raindrop.

Rock billions of years old all but explodes ( some literally do)
on exposure to the near perfect vacuum, temperature extremes,
and other forces of weathering of its moments as a stone on
the surface of the earth.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Tell me how, in the painting, one atom, one photon of reflected light is so much
as twitched, let alone " transformed" by your perception of its qualities.

Every proton, neutron, electron, photon etc to which the painting may be reduced, is in a restless, energised state. Nothing about the material world is fixed, or set.

Now tell me how it's qualities can ever be defined, described or understood, in the absence of an observer?

 

[Audie]

I am not in the least bit hostile toward science. Only toward scientism: the phony characterization and inaccurate adulation of science.

Why do you think we want to know those things? What do you think we do with that information?

Scientism is a chimera in your own head. Like all greed
and evil you fancy characterizes capitalism. Twin obsessions.

 

[icehorse]

The title says it all...

Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction?

Love, hate, empathy, consciousness, etc.

Great OP? I've thought about this question a lot over the years. It could be that we're all nothing more than the current collection of chemical reactions that started life on earth a few billion years ago. In this view, it's been just one long, complex, twisty-turny set of chemical reactions. Could be.

I have no proof of the following, but it gives me some comfort to think:

We're just beginning to barely scratch the surface of understanding the universe. Heisenberg said:

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”​

So I like to believe in something like "the force" from Star Wars. Not some petty god, but a web of energy and information that we're all part of.

 

[RestlessSoul]

If a theist were to suggest that this innate human curiosity were God given, the scientism cultists would be screaming up, down, and sideways about how our curiosity is the result of the evolutionary rewards (control over our environment) it gave us, and nothing else. Yet now, when I suggest that our innate curiosity is fundamentally self-serving, they become incredulous because they want to pretend science is some elevated, mystical truth-seeking endeavor.

How ironic.

Whilst this is undoubtedly true of many contributors to this forum, I doubt it's true of the actual scientists, of whom @exchemist is one.

 

[Audie]

Every proton, neutron, electron, photon etc to which the painting may be reduced, is in a restless, energised state. Nothing about the material world is fixed, or set.

Now tell me how it's qualities can ever be defined, described or understood, in the absence of an observer?

Like me, you are stating the obvious tho you still don't get what i said!

Which was zero about defining qualities.

From another I'd just call strawman, but I do t see that as your intent.

" Quality" is an odd word, irredeemably so after
I read " zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance."

So I won't use that word, and reject your use of it.

As I see it, in regarding the painting the observer is
looking into the capacity of the artist to convey a message,
from his mind to another's.

Said observer may find it a transcendent experience.
Whatever.

The painting though weaveth not, nor doth it sew.

Neither jot nor tittle, electron or anything else in the
painting knows cares reacts is affected in any way..

Having again, and now overstated the simple and obsequious,
I've nothing further to say on that.

 

[Audie]

Whilst this is undoubtedly true of many contributors to this forum, I doubt it's true of the actual scientists, of whom @exchemist is one.

Actually I doubt it's true of anyone.
Phony balony is, for one, self revealed
by such silly hyperbole as " screams"
and of course the " detection" of irony and
what is fancied to be hypocrisy on the part of
( in this case imaginary) others.

 

[PureX]

Whilst this is undoubtedly true of many contributors to this forum, I doubt it's true of the actual scientists, of whom @exchemist is one.

Scientism and science are not the same things, but they are not mutually exclusive, either. The former is a philosophy raised to the level of a godless religion. while the latter is just a process we use to help us negotiate physical reality. Keep in mind that once upon a time, and for a very long time, the priest and the scientist were the same person (the shaman).

 

[Audie]

Scientism and science are not the same things, but they are not mutually exclusive, either. The former is a philosophy raised to the level of a godless religion. while the latter is just a process we use to help us negotiate physical reality. Keep in mind that once upon a time, and for a very long time, the priest and the scientist were the same person (the shaman).

So science and superstition are not incompatible Droll.

 

[PureX]

Interestingly, this might be the best way of approaching quantum systems. They start to become less about discrete particles and more about how waveforms interact with one another, often without having any certain value of their own to the point they might as well only be defined by their relationships with one another.

I'm not a quantum physicist, so I apologize if that's incredibly ignorant on my part, but that's what I've gleaned on the subject.

... An existential event emanating from the interaction of possibility and limitation.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So science and superstition are not incompatible Droll.

That is an emotion. Start using objective evidence or you prove that you are nothing but a subjective believer, that cases about nothing more than how it feels subjectively.
Objective evidence and nothing else. No believer feelings.

 

[Audie]

On the subject of science, "scientism"
pseudoscience, witch doctors, scientists,
cargo cult science, and the incompatibility of opposites.

Richard Feynman will,clarify much, for those who
will read and think.

Cargo Cult Science

calteches.library.caltech.edu

Of note is that he presents profound in the complete
absence of the obscurantist jargon so popular with
pseudo-imtellectuals.