What exactly is Life about?
Reduced to its essence, the process of natural selection would look a lot like play.
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Play! Life is all about play. All species do it, of all ages. And even natural selection could be seen as analogous to play.
"In contrast to foraging and hunting – behaviors with clearly defined goals – play is likewise undirected. When a pony frolics in a field, a dog wrestles with a stick or chimpanzees chase each other, they act with no goal in mind.
Natural selection is utterly provisional: The evolution of any organism responds to whatever conditions are present at a given place and time. Likewise, animals at play are acting provisionally. They constantly adjust their movements in response to changes in circumstances. Playing squirrels, faced with obstacles such as falling branches or other squirrels, nimbly alter their tactics and routes."
Could we learn more about our place in the macrocosm by watching the animals play? By learning to play ourselves?
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What makes life possible is water. DNA is important because it is the template material, that provides mRNA templates, that are used to make raw protein. These raw protein are not bioactive until they are folded and packed by the water, via surface tension based water and oil effect. Without water nothing is bioactive or alive.
The state we call life, occurs at the secondary bonding level of the organic materials within water. Due to the shear numbers of water molecules in any aspect of life, and their continuous 3-D hydrogen bonding matrix, water is the dominate secondary bonding force in life. All the organics have to obey the needs of water, which gives everything the proper shapes and positions, so the cell can work as an integrated whole. If you add any other solvents, all things will pack and order differently, or not at all, and no sign of life will appear, right down enzymes. Life on earth evolved in water and powerful secondary bonding nature of water created natural molecular selection at the nanoscale.
Hydrogen bonding is not only important to water, but Is also part of all the main organic elements; DNA, RNA and protein, since these all evolved within water; abiogenesis. The hydrogen bonding of water and the organics is also connected to movement of information at the nanoscale. The hydrogen bond is mostly polar with some partial covalent character. If is like a tiny binary switch, between polar-covalent or charge-magnetism, that can move, information around the cell, with each setting having a different muscle. Besides preparing all the active biomaterials shapes and places it can move information so it can adapt to changes; equilibrium water-organic response.
The second aspect of life is the 2nd law. The entropy of the universe has to increase. This is the drive of nature to higher complexity, such as in play and adapting to new situations. Unlike energy which is conserved, entropy must increase, so even evolution much go forward due tø the entropy increase of the second law. Because of the water and oil effect, the entropy of the biomaterial structures tends to lower. In other words, an unpacked protein wiggling free can express more entropy; complexity, that one that is packed by water and unable to stretch out. Water creates a system wide lowering of organic structural entropy; entropic potential. The is an added potential beyond just the 2nd law for change; enzymatic and living.
The brain uses the same principles of water and entropy. Neurons expend over 90% of their metabolic energy pumping and exchanging sodium and potassium cations. All the energy is lowering cationic entropy; segregation and concentration of each cation. This add entropic potential. When neurons fire cationic entropy increases. Our sensory systems are wired into the brain to fire neurons. Therefore by using the five senses we satisfy the 2nd law. The urge to play is a rapid use of our sensory systems and muscles, all of which feed the 2nd law to overcome the deficit created by water and ion pumping/exchange.
The brain is like a fountain of increasing entropy, that flows to the core of the brain where it is distributed to the body and brain. All that touches this stream of increasing entropy gets more complex over time, with the excess, the basis of what we call consciousness and learning potential.
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