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minas Offline OP
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Is life only evolved chemical reactions?

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Yes, live is based on complex chemical systems which evolved from simple organic compounds. The simple organic compounds in turn were created by natural events, some of them in interstellar space, some of them here on Earth.

Bill Gill


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The technical name for the theory just involving chemicals on a site like Earth is Abiogenesis which you can internet search for a layman explanation.

The Miller–Urey experiment was the first real test of the idea and at the moment there are over 100 experiments running on it just based on paper citations based since 2000AD.

With the discovery of strange lifeforms around black smokers (hydrothermal vents) in the deep ocean the theory of abiogenesis itself had to be widened because those areas have bacteria with lives that revolve around sulfur.

The other possibility is as Bill G said via space and that goes under the name, Panspermia theory which you can again search. That theory still requires Abiogenesis to operate locally but posits that life will be found at many places in the universe.

That should give you enough reading to do to get you started and good luck.

Last edited by Orac; 01/15/16 04:13 AM.

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I'm wondering is there exist biological process? I think maybe.


To know more about biotech thing.
-Cindy
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http://www.creativebiomart.net/blog/
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Originally Posted By: Orac
The other possibility is as Bill G said via space and that goes under the name, Panspermia theory which you can again search. That theory still requires Abiogenesis to operate locally but posits that life will be found at many places in the universe.

Just to make it clear that I wasn't talking about panspermia. I was just talking about the fact that many organic chemicals have been found in interstellar space, and in meteorites which predate the formation of the Earth. They could have come to Earth in various forms and been here to be used in abiogenisis.

I know about Panspermia, but I have serious reservations about it. And even if it is true it doesn't answer the main question. How did life begin? Panspermia just pushes it back further into the past and to some other place in the universe.

Bill Gill


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Cindy, I'm not sure just what your question is. Could you restate it?

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minas Offline OP
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Organic chemistry poses an infinite variability in terms of stereochemistry due to different isoforms. In such a complex chemical organic system with infinite possible interactions, equillibrium may be avoided. In the long term, only those reactions that can sustain themselves will be selected and prevail and will be there in the final mixture.
But, isn't life as a whole a sum of self sustaining chemical systems?
However, things are not that easy because in the former case, the system will not be characterized by negentropy, and to my opinion that is the basic difference between chemistry and biology. If biology wasn't about order and negentropy, then all our problems would be solved, because organic chemistry everytime would evolve into something like life, due to selection of chemical reactions and everytime the result would have the same.

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This is the usual problems you try to understand something considering only half the story which unfortunately is all most are armed with by the end of their school days.

Lets start with chemistry which as a discipline derives laws based on observations under defined conditions. The problem with this, involves the words "defined conditions". Unfortunately chemistry does not cover the full range of energy (missing things like electromagnetic, nuclear energy and thermal energy) and so it has limited range of defined conditions. It is ill equipped to try and tackle situations that involve energy outside the discipline and at best all you can try and do is fudge the energy into it's laws. You will often see chemical equations written with an energy term but there is no careful description of the energy even it's basic type is often missing (heat, light, electric etc), it's just a basic energy number.

Biology sciences developed because it was realized that chemistry had other flaws such as organisms having the ability to change "defined conditions" under their self control. They needed to cover stimuli, growth and reproduction. So biology developed as a discipline that derives laws based on observations of organisms.

So both of these disciplines are of limited use when trying to tackle world or universal wide situations.

Lastly lets deal with the horrible and often misused term negentropy, you have chosen to use. First Biology is not about negentropy it is about observation of organisms. Negentropy is a ill defined horrific term, unless used in the context of information theory which at least realizes the Neg part of it is a misnomer (as the value must always be positive and it is never actually negative). For anyone who would like to argue then get them to define negentropy ... so lets give you an example

I see some religious pseudo-scientists argue for example that life leads to a decrease of entropy, because it involves things getting more organized over time and so they like the term negentropy because it backs this view. This is complete garbage what they are leaving out is the products of the process which aren't chemical. For you and me as humans it is water and vapors, excretions and tons and tons of heat which is not fully covered under our chemical description and discipline. Taken from a proper physics point of view, you and I have positive entropy on the world and to argue against that is to say we could live without ever eating. You have to eat because you are pouring energy into your surrounds in every direction and your entropy contribution to the universe is most definitely positive.

Even plants take a nice uniform energy source from the sun and messes it up into multiple other energy things to grow and like living things excretes and radiates different energies. From a chemical discipline you might see chemicals joining together BUT look from the energy point of view. The only perspective to view the entropy of the universe is from the universe. Chemistry and Biology can say nothing on the matter for the universe as they don't describe the universe and are very incomplete.

There is only one framework that completely describes energy of the universe and that is Information Theory. Most layman won't recognize their universe in that framework because it needs to treat every measurable change as a bit of information. Layman understanding aside there are no known violations of the theory. Your next best choice would be Quantum Mechanics, which as a framework will describe energy correctly everywhere excluding gravity. You can described QM inside Information Theory as the two theories are completely compatible (pretty amazing since they developed independently) and that is sometimes called Quantum Information Theory.

So now we get to what you said
Originally Posted By: minas
If biology wasn't about order and negentropy, then all our problems would be solved

Well Biology isn't about order and the butchered term negentropy it's about observation of organisms.

Originally Posted By: minas
because organic chemistry everytime would evolve into something like life, due to selection of chemical reactions and everytime the result would have the same.

No it wouldn't because chemistry is not a complete description of the universe, there are massive areas of energy exchanges it does not cover. It fares little better than biology in understanding entropy of an organism.

The lesson here is understand what discipline you are using to tackle a problem and what the limits of that discipline are.

Last edited by Orac; 01/20/16 01:31 AM.

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I think in a way Orac answered your question, but I'm not sure that you would have caught on to what he is saying. He sometimes gets to thinking in bottom up terms and he can leave others behind. He starts with the quantum effects that drive everything except gravity. He is right in one way. At the bottom of everything is physics. Chemistry is just a very complex system of interactions at the quantum level. And of course life is just a very complex system of chemical reactions.

First question: What is negentropy? Is it a proper scientific word? I think Orac questioned that.

If you mean negative entropy then there is a relatively simple answer. There is no negative entropy in life. The concept of entropy tells us that a system always moves from a more organized state to a less organized state. For example if you have a perfectly insulated box full of air the molecules of air will tend to have the same (average) velocity. The molecules could all at once move to one side of the box, but the chances of that happening during the full lifetime of the universe (past and present) is negligible.

When we look at any form of life we find that molecules are assembled into very structured forms. This can look like negative entropy. But life is not an isolated system like the completely insulated box of air. Life is part of a very large system, and in the creation of all those highly structured forms of life we find that there is more energy used in he construction of those complex forms than is contained in the forms. So the construction of those forms results in an increase in entropy.

If you must use the word negentropy then you should realize that it doesn't happen.

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Thank you for that Bill G that is very accurate to what I was trying to say but I don't have the English language skills to do it like that.

The only bit I don't like in your simplification is equating Entropy to things like molecule movement because that is only semi true or at least true in the most general case.

So my only change would be instead of your sentence about molecule movement I would say:

Entropy is about what is happening to the energy (you can call it microstate information if you like). Entropy is not about whether things are getting complex in human terms it is whether the energy is getting spread into more complex form(s) requiring more information. A plant is an example of where equating human concepts rather than energy complexity will mislead you. I guess in layman terms is the energy being spread more widely.

Last edited by Orac; 01/21/16 02:13 AM.

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I was a little concerned about that paragraph, but for some reason couldn't figure what was wrong with it.

Bill Gill


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You turn entropy into faster molecules AKA heat in classic physics so you posit the same result as in the Lord Kelvin believed that the universe must die a terminal heat death. As I said your idea isn't horrifically wrong if you use a normal classical example but like Lord Kelvin you need to be careful because Entropy is a little bit subtle and tricky under classical physics.

I would normally refer you to wikipedia but the heat death of the universe page is horrible it won't help you.

Ok, so let me create an example using molecule speed for you to ponder. I have a two groups of molecules and in both situations I measure the same temperature.

a). The molecules are bouncing backward and forward between two plates horizontally in a nice continual pattern (so like a waveguide or laser cavity).
b). The molecules in this group are bouncing around randomly in a box.

So group (a) and (b) have the same temperature but do they have the same Entropy?

I really doubt you will need it Bill G, but some like minas may so here is a related help hint .... Look at Magnetic refrigeration its easy to see what happens.

Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigeration ... look at the 2nd image down.

It's easy to see what is going on but there is no way to put a measurement on it under classical physics. The subtle reason why you can't even tackle the problem is because the entropy relationship between the particles is all relative, yes Einstein and friends solved this problem.

The above is why dealing with Entropy in classical physics becomes a bit of hand waving and there is no way to avoid it. It is also why so many errors about Entropy persist and are passed along.

So your answer would be correct for normal gas situations that a layman would encounter ... hence I used the term "semi true". It's something I wouldn't expected anyone to know unless they had done university physics.

Last edited by Orac; 01/21/16 03:06 PM.

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minas Offline OP
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I think that darwinism is a concept that applies in many aspects of science. For instance, If chemical reactions avoid equillibrium, then they will undergo some sort of darwinism c, and the long term result will be the prevailance and selection of the most sustainable systems of reactions. But as i previously said, what is life other than a sum of self-sustainable chemical systems?

However, as you pointed out, things are not that easy, because this means that in the above scenario, a chemical chaos will be created instead, and if we assign an entropy on life as a whole system, this will increase over time. In this sense, chemistry is indeed the same thing as biology, only more complex.
However, i think that this actually might be the case after all, and i will explain..

We think of life as miracle and order, because for instance, some might say that a cell is much more ordered than its components, which means that a cell is an ordered and not a chaotic system.

But:
A cell is much more ordered than its components, but what we forget is that a cell never exists in isolation. Imagine you have a flask with water that is heated with fire. The molecules of water will start speeding randomly toward various directions. Virtually, what you are doing here with the cell argument is ignoring the fire and the majority of other water molecules and focusing only on subset of 1 or 2 specific molecules. These molecules will be perceived as gaining speed without an obvious reason,..
Lesson: Never forget the rest of the picture..

For this reason, i believe that we should re-evaluate everything from the beginning and accept nothing as an a-priori knowledge. In other words, we should test experimentally, those entropic changes over time in living systems as directly as possible..
If there are increases, i don't see why chemistry is any different from biology....

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Originally Posted By: minas
i don't see why chemistry is any different from biology....

Yes, biology is chemistry. The difference is the complexity involved. There are a huge number of different chemical molecules in a single cell. It is the interaction of these different molecules that creates life. The thing about it is that the interactions are so complex that it is impossible to completely describe them all. The best that biologists have come up with so far is a general description. They know what the molecules are and have made a lot of discoveries about the interactions, but there is still lot that isn't understood. The question is: Just how does life emerge from chemistry? It appears to be one of those emergent things that appear to come about without us being able to predict it from basic principles (in this case the theory of how molecules form).

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minas Offline OP
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Reducing biology to chemistry is an important step, as it changes the way we view diseases, (as chains of chemical reactions that can be manipulated) etc, etc...
In my opinion, biology in theory can be reduced down to chemistry, which can even be reduced down to physics, but things grow tremendously complex and its not worth it.
Additionally, some people try to include mathematics as well! I think that mathematical models cannot apply to biological systems that easily. For instance, mathematical models cannot fully represent true biological phenomena because they don't account for the spatial factor. Additionally, they only assume that all chemicals can react with each other without accounting for inhibitory events, or other kind of interactions such as adhesive properties, hydrophobic interactions, etc, etc....Moreover, they can be manipulated until they work.
Some scientists (even legit ones) introduced some kind of these supposed models into computers, played with complexity and supposedly got some incredible hidden patterns that miraculously emerged, in other words, nothing less than bacteria, flowers, animals, etc...
Now i think this is an example how wrong initial assumptions, when used in wrong ways, can lead us to monstruously misleading conclusions.
If your approach in order to answer how from complex primordial chemistry we got to today’s life is this, then it is life answering to the question how from 1, 2, 5, 8 you got 5689 and you claim: Eureka!!! Its 1+2=15*5=3000*8=5689

On the contrary, I think that in a complex chemical system, due to all the kinds of interactions which are unpredictable, the most sustainable combinations of interactions (or else the resulting mixture) will be slowly selected in a step-by-step fashion, brick by brick, until we get the final mixture that will be super sustainable because it was sculped and shaped by eons of struggles and competitions...

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First off let me make it clear that I am not now and have never been a biologist. Biology is much too complex for me. I prefer physics, even with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. They are much more straight forward because the systems they deal with are much simpler than biological systems, at least as long as you don't try to explain things like biology in terms of QM.

Now, in general, I tend to agree with what you say. But I don't necessarily agree with your rejection of the application of mathematics to biology. Working with simple models can lead to insights that will be useful in guiding investigations into real systems. The use of mathematical models can bring out relationships that are hidden in the complexities of real systems. Careful interpretation of these relationships can be used to provide new insights into the functioning of biological systems.

There that ought to be enough BS for this morning.

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I think you have got your math a little mucked up. 3000*8 = 24000, and 15*5 ia 75. I do not see where you get your airy fairy answer. Did you roll a lot of multi-sided dice?
Originally Posted By: minas
If your approach in order to answer how from complex primordial chemistry we got to today’s life is this, then it is life answering to the question how from 1, 2, 5, 8 you got 5689 and you claim: Eureka!!! Its 1+2=15*5=3000*8=5689

On the contrary, I think that in a complex chemical system, due to all the kinds of interactions which are unpredictable, the most sustainable combinations of interactions (or else the resulting mixture) will be slowly selected in a step-by-step fashion, brick by brick, until we get the final mixture that will be super sustainable because it was sculped and shaped by eons of struggles and competitions...


As a Biologist I can say there is a lot of mathematics that can be applied to Biology. Biology is mainly a study of populations and statistics are very useful in observing and interpreting the behavior of groups, if we are studying bacteria or mice. I'd like to know the source of your exotic mathematics, though, I could use something like that on my income tax forms.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Quote:
I'd like to know the source of your exotic mathematics, though, I could use something like that on my income tax forms.


Have a care, Rose, with such exotic mathematics you could end up with your tax exceeding your income. smile


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minas Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: Amaranth Rose II


As a Biologist I can say there is a lot of mathematics that can be applied to Biology. Biology is mainly a study of populations and statistics are very useful in observing and interpreting the behavior of groups, if we are studying bacteria or mice. I'd like to know the source of your exotic mathematics, though, I could use something like that on my income tax forms.

Lol!! I can help you if you want. However, adding some exotic statistics can provide even more impressive results.

I was mainly referring to the problems of mathematics dealing with biological complexity and modeling chemical reactions. Statistics are amazing, I use a lot of it myself, but statistics are mainly a tool for answering relatively simple questions, such as yes or no. Increases or decreases? Sometimes it tries to answer more complex ones, but you can see that the more the parameters, the less reliableand precise it gets. You even have serious problems when dealing with 5 or 10 parameters simultaneously. Actually what you actually do in that case is choosing the less wrong model…
On the other hand, i don't agree with the widely cited phrase: " there are lies, more lies and statistics"..I think that they are an amazing tool but one has to be aware of its limitations

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Actually I need no exotic maths on income tax forms, I file no income tax, as according to the government I have no income. But thanks for the offer.

And I think the quote was, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics." But when all you have to study are populations, statistics become very useful. It would be very difficult to list up every American citizen who doesn't pay taxes, much easier to group them as a statistic and a subset. That requires ignoring certain characteristics about them and focusing on other attributes instead.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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