[Joseph]

Hello Lloyd,

Of course I’ll be happy to explain how this proposed universal law tells us how the first living cells could evolve from inanimate matter. I regret it took so long to complete. I don’t know if you picked up on it or not, but in the original article I stated, albeit in passing, that the universe was always going to produce human beings. I wondered if anyone would pick up on that. But no one’s said anything so far. I tried again in my first response to you, except that I referred to the first living cells rather than complete humans. It was to this you responded. However, I was of course disappointed that it was such a negative response. I say that because you referred to my attempt in the original article to portray the universe as a complete system through the use of an admittedly proposed wave energy theory as "wave energy mumbo-jumbo". While I applaud your eloquence, since everything else in the article was based on that wave-energy mumbo-jumbo (I hope you won’t mind my using that phrase in the future—there’s a certain ring to it), I’m going to have to regrettably assume that any other conclusions, including how life came to exist on earth, since that portion of the proposed overall theory of the universe is also based on that wave-energy mumbo-jumbo, will also be rejected by you out of hand.

So before I get into the main subject here let me try one more time to reach you about the importance of visualizing the universe as a complete system, and why the one I proposed in the original article might very well be the one we’re looking for. And I’m going to begin with an analogy.

Have you ever worked a jigsaw puzzle? If you have, then you know it’s a two step process. First you turn all the pieces right side up. For the second step, using the picture on the box-top for a guide, you assemble the pieces. No problemo. But let’s say you can’t do step two. You can’t put the pieces together. But then you remember there’s another puzzle and maybe someone switched the boxtops. So you get the other boxtop with the other picture on it and, sure enough, now you can begin to assemble the pieces. By doing this you’ve accomplished two things. You’ve assembled the picture and you’ve proved the second picture is the one you’re looking for.

Well, that’s sort of the situation theoretical physicists are in now. They’ve been turning over the pieces of the universal puzzle—the laws, principles, truths, etc., they’ve come up with so far for centuries now. But with the current picture they have, they can’t assemble the pieces. If you remember, I described the current picture in the original article. Basically, based only on what they’ve been able to make out from the pieces they’ve turned over so far, physicists think that everything in the universe is made of some really strange stuff called energy. That in the beginning, even before the big bang, this energy existed as a really hot, dense, plasma of some kind. Then there was some mysterious, enormous explosion which somehow blew the energy plasma into EM waves and particles of matter. In this scenario, then, the universe is expanding purely because of the force of the explosion, so, naturally, researchers are trying to find out if the force of gravity is strong enough to slow the universe down, stop it, and reverse the flow of EM waves and matter.

The thing is, though, using this view of the universe, none of the pieces turned over so far, and there are a lot of them, fit together into a clear picture. Further, if you remember the list of questions (and I know I keep pointing to this list, but I do it for good reason), using the current view, no one can answer any of these questions having to do with the fundamental nature of the universe. At least not in a way such they, along with all the other pieces interlock together into a clear picture of the universe. And, perhaps most telling of all, a lot of researchers have concluded that it appears the universe’s energy, in all its forms, is trying to constantly seek out ever more stable states of equilibrium. In other words, that the universe itself is moving toward equilibrium; not away from it as the current view holds. And physicists have never been able to explain this either. So, obviously, they’re working with the wrong picture.

So what I’ve done, by proposing that EM waves are inherently elastic and propagate helically, is come up with a different view of the universe. Only with this one I’m pretty sure we can answer all the questions on that list (I can even answer most of them myself), so that now the answers, along with all the other pieces turned over fit together into a clear and reasonable picture of the universe. Plus, now the universe isn’t heading away from equilibrium as the current view holds, but toward it just as a lot of the research is telling us is happening.

Well, Lloyd, you just got my last, best shot on why we need a different view of the universe, and why I think this is the one. If that doesn’t reach you, there’s probably not much sense in trying to answer your question. Yet I’m still going to try my best to do just that, not so much because it’s going to make any difference to you, but for two other reasons. First, because you were good enough to take the time to respond in the first place, and for that alone deserve an answer, and because I have another, larger motive.

As you probably already know, there is a growing controversy between some so-called "evolutionists" and some so-called "creationists" regarding the "intelligent design" of the universe. The U.S. media’s having a field day with it. The reason why the scientific community is generally against the idea is specifically because the initial appearance of living cells on earth, and Darwin’s subsequent version of evolution, are both based on purely accidental natural selection. Which basically shuts the door on any sort of intelligent design. However, if the universal law turns out to be correct, and we can eventually explain our appearance here on earth is not totally accidental, well, while it doesn’t prove the existence of intelligent design, it certainly does open the door right back up again.

Like most really good arguments, the new view of natural selection and evolution presented here could eventually lead to their both being right. So I’m thinking of writing another article to submit to Toequest.com. Maybe I’ll call it, on a lighter note, "the right square theory" because I’m thinking that such an article, based on what I’ve written in the original article and here as well, would probably come down right square between the two sides of the argument. It doesn’t completely settle the argument, but it at least puts the discussion in a more favorable light for eventual resolution.

However, getting back to our discussion, this proposed theory, and the universal law which derives from it, allows us for the first time to see and understand the universe (absent human behavior) as a continuous, orderly, and essentially predictable process stretching from the big bang to the present day and beyond. And I think that (a) how and why the first living cells came to exist on earth, and (b) how and why they evolved all the way to us, may well prove to be the most sophisticated, maybe even the most elegant, application of the universal law. Not to mention of the greatest direct importance to the human race.

Sorry for the soapboxing. My kids and grandkids would warn you not to ask grandpa a question unless you have a few minutes.

OK, then. The first thing I want to do here is review what I know about what the scientific community knows (or thinks it knows) about how we got here. And, because Darwin’s Principle of Natural Selection came a century before the work of others on (a), and because the scientific community has used Darwin’s natural selection to help explain (a), I think it’s best to start with Darwin’s work first.

To begin with, let me point out that while Darwin deserves the credit for the term "principle of natural selection", the two earlier laws I wrote about in the article, the Principle of Least Action, and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics or the entropy law, are also "natural selection" laws. With the least action principle, the path requiring the least effort or work to get from the beginning state to the end state of a process is "naturally selected". Right? And the entropy law basically says that inanimate processes are always "naturally selecting" states of ever increasing entropy. And that’s because the universal law I’ve proposed, from which all these laws derive, is itself a natural selection law. Actually, instead of stating it as "the wave energy of the universe is constantly seeking ever more stable states of equilibrium", I could have written it instead as "the wave energy of the universe naturally selects ever more stable states of equilibrium". In other words, all the laws dealing directly with energy/matter’s search for equilibrium are natural selection laws.
The thing is, Darwin of course didn’t know about these other laws, and about matter’s search for equilibrium, and about DNA, and so forth. Still, by attributing the evolution of species to the natural selection of those best suited for survival in their environment, he was close to being right on. What he did not realize was that his version of natural selection is partly the result of a deeper, more fundamental, and far more orderly process. The natural selection by matter of ever more stable states of equilibrium. The better adapted you are to your environment, the easier it is, and the less work or effort is required, to remain alive. In other words, he recognized the consequence of evolution, which was the origin of species. He just had no possible way of knowing the true cause, instead attributing evolution to pure chance. He knew the process was by natural selection, you might say, he just didn’t fully understand what was actually being naturally selected.

There’s one more point to be made here. Pure chance does enter into the natural selection process in another way. Sudden, large-scale changes in the environment, i.e., earthquakes, large-scale volcanic eruptions, an asteroid possibly slamming into earth to wipe out the large dinosaurs, etc., certainly also brought some degree of chance into the equation. But, for the most part, Darwin’s Principle of Natural Selection was given order, direction, and purpose through the ages by the orderly, understandable, and predictable universal law.

What I’m going to do now is show how the universal law is also partly responsible for the evolution of the first living cells from "dead" atoms and molecules, and then merge this process with Darwin’s portion of evolution.
As I mentioned in the article, almost a century after Darwin’s work became public the physicist Ilya Prigogine determined that the entropy of a living cell decreases as it grows or assembles. In other words, that a living cell has more energy, and is capable of doing more work, than the sum of the energys and work its individual atoms and molecules would be able to do before they are assembled into the cell. Prigogine also noted that a living cell appears to exist in a state of equilibrium that is somehow separate or isolated from its environment. I believe he called the cell’s state "near" equilibrium. He wrote that there was something really important about these findings, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

Later the physicist and microbiologist Carl Sagan performed some experiments at Cornell U. to try and better understand how the first living cells might have come into existence. By this time physicists and biologists already knew that the larger, more complex atoms and molecules have a smaller surface charge, which requires a gentle environment like the earth’s oceans, especially near the equator, where temperature changes are small and in a range conducive to the organization of large, complex molecules. And also that there were incomprehensibly large and varied quantities of atoms and simple molecules available in these oceans for Darwin’s natural selection by pure chance to work its magic over a four billion year period. But Sagan felt he still had to explain the fact, noted by Prigogine, that living cells are "high-energy" cells. For certainly, that extra energy was necessary for the cell to survive, and reproduce, and just generally qualify as being "alive". And besides, both he and Prigogine recognized how important it was to find out why the entropy law had reversed itself with living organisms. Eventually, as he explained it on his "Nova" TV series, the only way he and his team could account for this extra energy was to assume that random lightning strikes might possibly strike atoms and simple molecules of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc., in the atmosphere, somehow imparting to them the required extra energy. Then, he reasoned, after these high-energy atoms and molecules had fallen into the oceans, Darwin’s principle would have kicked in so that, over some four billion years of countless connections, disconnections, and reconnections, the original much simpler high energy molecules would evolve into ever more complex high energy molecules, eventually resulting in the appearance of the first, self-sustaining living cells.

Thus, you see, Sagan, like Darwin, attributed both the appearance of the original high-energy atoms and molecules, as well as the eventual appearance of high-energy living cells by the process of natural selection, strictly to chance.

So now, employing the universal law, let me give you my version of what happened.

First of all, we generally define equilibrium, which I should have done in the original article, as a state of existence where a minimum of work is done by the object matter on its environment, and vice versa. In other words, a state where little or no energy passes across the boundary of the object matter in either direction. This also means that the object matter would remain in its state of equilibrium until something changes, either in the object matter or in the environment. Thus, again generally speaking, the more stable the state of equilibrium, the longer the object matter undergoes no change of state. Further, we normally think of such a state of equilibrium as being a fairly simple state to achieve and maintain as long as the environment, which is often the larger of the two systems involved, remains unchanged. Which is, again, most often the case.

But let’s say that the environment refuses to cooperate. Let’s say that the much larger environment is in a constant state of change. If that’s the case, then the object matter may never be able to achieve a stable state of equilibrium. Why? Because changes in the state of the environment starts up the energy flows again and the object matter is forced to change its state to match up once again with the environment.

But let’s say the environmental changes are not too radical, but moderate, fairly slow and steady changes about some mean state of equilibrium. Like what happens on the surface of the earth. So what happens then?
Well, if you think about it, there is a way to naturally select for equilibrium states if these states are somehow able to remain separated from the constantly changing environment. Which, remember, is what Prigogine discovered but couldn’t explain. In other words, the only way to create a state of fairly stable equilibrium in conditions which are not conducive to such a state is to create sort of an island of equilibrium that’s somehow isolated, at least equilibrium-wise, from the environment. But to do that such a colony or cell of molecules would have to be able to do a lot of work to remain sufficiently isolated from its environment. Thus it would have to be composed of extremely complex high-energy molecules capable of constantly doing a lot of work such as taking in energy from the environment and distributing it as needed throughout the cell when the outside temperature drops.

As to where these high-energy molecules come from, of all the molecules existing in the ocean, even the simplest ones, some are going to naturally have just a little more free (extra) energy available than others. In other words, there may well be some higher energy molecules because of lightning strikes, but there’s also going to be some for other reasons. And since these slightly higher energy molecules have a tiny bit better chance of lasting for a longer period of time in an environment where the temperature is constantly changing, this means they are in a state of more stable equilibrium to begin with than are the other molecules around them. And so the universal law kicks in and selects them over the lower energy molecules which don’t last as long.

Now if you’re thinking all this natural selection stuff is getting too complicated to be real, don’t forget that Darwin and Sagan and the rest of the scientific community, given the beyond astronomical numbers of atoms and molecules on earth for the past four billion years, and the beyond astronomical numbers of possible connections, disconnections, reconnections, and so on, which ensued, have been perfectly satisfied that living cells could happen just by accidental natural selection alone. After all, they do exist. It’s just that the universal law says its even easier and more certain than that.

So you see. It’s conceivable that the natural selection of living cells would not be completely by accident as scientists currently believe. Even the natural selection of higher energy molecules to make up the cell could be a more certain gradual process over billions of years, rather than by an accidental lightning bolt.

And there’s something else. Sagan also said, and remember that he was a physicist and microbiologist, that natural selection would also be solely responsible for the living cell to use its extra energy to eventually construct DNA and reproduce, which is a requirement for the eventual evolution of the first living cells to us. And again, according to Sagan, all this would be done purely by chance. The universal law’s version of natural selection, on the other hand, would justify naturally selecting for DNA bearing cells not just by accident, but also because cell reproduction increases the overall stability of cell equilibrium by constantly replacing the high-energy, quickly worn out cell with a new one. So the cell essentially remains in existence for a longer period of time, which translates into a state of more stable equilibrium for another reason. And once again the universal law kicks in.

But that’s not all. Sex enters the reproductive scene because, by mixing together the two genetic codes from two separate cells, which gives the two-celled organism a better chance of dealing with relatively small, relatively slow changes in the environment, this gives the organism yet another way to achieve more stable equilibrium.

So if you think about it, the universal law’s natural selection of most stable states of equilibrium transforms smoothly from constructing the first living cells to the task of naturally selecting ever more complex living organisms since, after all, the scientific community already agrees that increasing complexity generally translates to a more efficient system capable of lasting longer. Especially if ever increasing complexity results in the natural selection of living organisms with brains. Organisms which can choose their behavior and plan their future.

Finally, then, while purely accidental natural selection is partly responsible for the appearance of the first single-cell organisms, the universal law certainly has a great deal to do with it as well. And the same can be said for the origin of species.

Well, Lloyd, basically there you are. Remember, in attempting to explain in general terms how the universal law drove the natural selection of the first living cells, and their evolution into us, what I’ve tried to do here is demonstrate once again that the proposed universal law provides a mechanism which helps to drive the universal process of evolution from the very beginning of time right up to the present, and beyond, in a seamless, orderly, and understandable way. Of course, even if the arguments presented here are true, or mostly so, they still don’t prove the proposed law really is all I’m thinking it is. As Einstein put it, "mother nature is the cruelest of judges, with all her yeses conditional, and all her nos absolute". But I’m liking its chances more all the time.

Regards, Joseph