scholarly journals Simplicity out of complexity? On physical eschatology and abiogenesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Milan Cirkovic
Keyword(s):  
Cosmological Horizon ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Continuity Thesis ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Probable Origin ◽  
Phylogenetic Lineages ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Universe

Standard reductionist narrative about the necessity of complex systems arising from simple subsystems can be undermined from multiple directions. Here, I shall suggest an unexpected way of such undermining which occurs upon joining our best understanding of the future evolution of the universe (as outlined by physical eschatology) with the continuity thesis which plays the key role in studies of the origin of life (abiogenesis). Many aspects of evolution - including physical, chemical, and astrobiological evolution - would look quite different from what we empirically find around us at the present epoch if the history of the universe within our cosmological horizon were to be observed from a timeless ?Archimedean? point. Avoiding the pitfalls of this chronocentric bias leads to several unexpected conclusions, one of them being that the directed panspermia, coupled with advanced biotechnology, represents the most probable origin of almost all phylogenetic lineages in the universe. Therefore, complex lifeforms are required for emergence of (almost) all simple lifeforms. This has several counterintuitive and unexpected philosophical consequences.

scholarly journals Entropy and Eschatology: A Comment on Kutrovátz's Paper "Heat Death in Ancient and Modern Thermodynamics"

2002 ◽  
Vol 09 (03) ◽  
pp. 291-299
Author(s):  
Milan M. Ćirković
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Anthropic Principle ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Alternative Route ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Self Selection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Heat Death ◽  
The Universe

Recent intriguing discussion of heat death by Kutrovátz is critically examined. It is shown that there exists another way of answering the heat death puzzle, already present in the ancient philosophical tradition. This alternative route relies not only on the final duration of time (which has been re-discovered in modern times), but also on the notion of observational self-selection, which has received wide publicity in the last several decades under the title of the anthropic principle(s). We comment here on some further deficiencies of the account of Kutrovátz. Although the questions Kutrovátz raises are important and welcome, there are several errors in his treatment of cosmology which mar his account of the entire topic. In addition, the nascent discipline of physical eschatology holds promise of answering the basic explanatory task concerning the future evolution of the universe without appealing to metaphysics. This is a completely novel feature in the history of science, in contradistinction to the historical examples discussed by Kutrovátz.

scholarly journals Numerical modelling of past retreat and future evolution of Chhota Shigri glacier in Western Indian Himalaya

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (75pt2) ◽  
pp. 136-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prateek Gantayat ◽  
Anil V. Kulkarni ◽  
J. Srinivasan ◽  
Maurice J Schmeits
Keyword(s):  
Indian Himalaya ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chhota Shigri Glacier ◽  
Climatic Scenarios ◽  
History Of ◽  
Glacier Length ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACT The history of glacier length fluctuations serves as a reliable indicator of the past climate. In this paper, a numerical flowline model has been used to study the relationship between length variations of Chhota Shigri glacier and local climate since 1876. The simulated front positions of Chhota Shigri glacier are in agreement with those observed. After a successful simulation of the past retreat, the model was also used to predict future evolution of the glacier for the next 100 years under different climatic scenarios. These simulations indicate that the Chhota Shigri glacier may lose ~90% of its present volume by 2100 if the local temperature increases by 2.4 K, and for a temperature rise of 5.5 K, the glacier loses almost all its volume.

Life as a geologic force: New opportunities for paleontology?

Paleobiology ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Westbroek
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
Geochemical Reactions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Radiation Modeling ◽  
Physical And Chemical

From a geological point of view, life is an integrated part of the exogenic cycle, a mere elaboration of the physical and chemical processes operating on earth. The origin of life marks the transition from a physical and chemical world into one where physical, chemical, and biological processes form an integrated continuum. Life is at work in a big way, and one may regard the biosphere as a laminar, highly activated global envelope, energized by solar radiation, modeling the terrestrial physiognomy, and catalyzing major geochemical reactions. There can be no doubt that the biota have exerted a profound influence on the development of our planet. The history of life and the earth is one of coevolution (Dubos 1979).

PENGATURAN MENGENAI SATWA SEBAGAI UPAYA PENCEGAHAN POTENSI PANDEMI DI MASA DEPAN

2021 ◽  
pp. 477
Author(s):  
Suwinto Johan
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Animal Law ◽  
Disease Mutations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Universe

Humans have been hit by pandemics several times during the history of humanity. Several pandemics have resulted in very significant human casualties. The Spanish flu in 1918 had an estimated toll of up to 50 million people. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has infected humans with more than 100,000,000 infected victims and reached more than 200 countries with more than 2,000,000 human victims. Almost all pandemics are caused by disease mutations from animals to humans, which are called zoonoses. The human desire to live a better life and the desire to rule the universe by killing animals. This research is a normalitve juridical study. This research concludes that animal law is needed in line with environmental law to protect humans based on an axiological approach. In addition to protecting, this law also serves to limit human freedom in behavior.Manusia telah dilanda beberapa kali pandemi selama sejarah kemanusiaan. Beberapa pandemik telah mengakibatkan jumlah korban yang sangat signifikan pada manusia. Spanish flu pada tahun 1918 telah mengakibatkan korban diperkirakan berjumlah hingga 50 juta manusia. Pada tahun 2020, pandemi Covid-19 telah menyangkit manusia dengan korban yang terinfeksi lebih dari 100.000.000 manusia dan menjangkau lebih dari 200 negara dengan korban lebih dari 2.000.000 manusia. Hampir semua pandemi diakibatkan oleh mutasi penyakit dari binatang ke manusia atau disebut dengan zoonosis. Keinginan manusia untuk hidup lebih baik dan keinginan untuk menguasai alam semesta dengan melakukan pembunuhan terhadap binatang. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian yuridis normalitf. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa diperlukannya hukum satwa sejalan dengan hukum lingkungan untuk melindungi manusia berdasarkan pendekatan aksiologi. Selain untuk melindungi, hukum ini juga berfungsi untuk membatasi kebebasan manusia dalam bertingkah laku.

The Tempo and mode(S) of Prebiotic Evolution

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 419-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Lazcano
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Organic Compounds ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Early Diversification ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The Origin Of Life

AbstractDifferent current ideas on the origin of life are critically examined. Comparison of the now fashionable FeS/H2S pyrite-based autotrophic theory of the origin of life with the heterotrophic viewpoint suggest that the later is still the most fertile explanation for the emergence of life. However, the theory of chemical evolution and heterotrophic origins of life requires major updating, which should include the abandonment of the idea that the appearance of life was a slow process involving billions of years. Stability of organic compounds and the genetics of bacteria suggest that the origin and early diversification of life took place in a time period of the order of 10 million years. Current evidence suggest that the abiotic synthesis of organic compounds may be a widespread phenomenon in the Galaxy and may have a deterministic nature. However, the history of the biosphere does not exhibits any obvious trend towards greater complexity or «higher» forms of life. Therefore, the role of contingency in biological evolution should not be understimated in the discussions of the possibilities of life in the Universe.

Seeking to uncover biology's chemical roots

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 435-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Addy Pross
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
The Road ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
Systems Chemistry ◽  
Biological World ◽  
Inanimate Matter ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Opening Up

Despite the considerable advances in molecular biology over the past several decades, the nature of the physical–chemical process by which inanimate matter become transformed into simplest life remains elusive. In this review, we describe recent advances in a relatively new area of chemistry, systems chemistry, which attempts to uncover the physical–chemical principles underlying that remarkable transformation. A significant development has been the discovery that within the space of chemical potentiality there exists a largely unexplored kinetic domain which could be termed dynamic kinetic chemistry. Our analysis suggests that all biological systems and associated sub-systems belong to this distinct domain, thereby facilitating the placement of biological systems within a coherent physical/chemical framework. That discovery offers new insights into the origin of life process, as well as opening the door toward the preparation of active materials able to self-heal, adapt to environmental changes, even communicate, mimicking what transpires routinely in the biological world. The road to simplest proto-life appears to be opening up.

From the Tower of London to the Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires: “Give me thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought”

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 164) (4) ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Short History ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Tower Of London ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Book Of Hours ◽  
Almost All

The Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires begins or ends almost all its events by reciting in both English and Spanish a prayer written by More in the margins of his Book of Hours probably while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. After a short history of what is called Thomas More’s Prayer Book, the author studies the prayer as a poem written in the form of a psalm according to the structure of Hebrew poetry, and looks at the poem’s content as a psalm of lament.

Roshdi Rashed

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 279-295
Author(s):  
Mohammed Aref
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Great Book ◽  
Mathematical Language ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Elementary Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

This review essay introduces the work of the Egyptian scientific historian and philosopher Roshdi Rashed, a pioneer in the field of the history of Arab sciences. The article is based on the five volumes he originally wrote in French and later translated into Arabic, which were published by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies and which are now widely acclaimed as a unique effort to unveil the achievements of Arab scientists. The essay reviews this major work, which seems, like Plato’s Republic to have “No Entry for Those Who Have No Knowledge of Mathematics” written on its gate. If you force your way in, even with elementary knowledge of computation, a philosophy will unfold before your eyes, described by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei as “written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” The essay is a journey through this labyrinth where the history of world mathematics got lost and was chronicled by Rashed in five volumes translated from the French into Arabic. It took him fifteen years to complete.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

Galileo Unbound

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Free Fall ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Quantum Field ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
Quantum Particles ◽  
Light Rays ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Insight Into

Galileo Unbound: A Path Across Life, The Universe and Everything traces the journey that brought us from Galileo’s law of free fall to today’s geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman’s dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once—setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.

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