From: onar@hsr.no (Onar Aam)
Subject: Further Clarification
Organization: Rogaland University Centre
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 17:49:44 GMT

In an earlier article I stated that life as a whole is tending towards greater
complexity. This is a huge topic which is hard to prove or disprove, maybe even
impossible. But I will give it a shot.


I will start off with a couple of questions:

Why hasn't life evolved many times on earth? ( maybe it has, but there is no
evidence supporting it as I know of.)
Can a completely new branch of life evolve from bacteria today? ( could for
instance multicellular life "reappear" from bacteria?)

I will get back to these questions as they are of major importance. But first,
let's take a look at humanity and the revolution of science.


Are there some true milestones in science which cannot be equalled? Yes!!
The taming of fire and the invention of the wheel to mention but a few. These are
examples of what we would call "progress". To define progress is hard, but I
think most people have a reasonable intuitive understanding of what progress is
without the need of an exact defenition. Even so, the area in science where
"progress" is more accurate is Mathematics.

Yet another question: Which topics in mathematics are best understood? I think
that mathematicians would agree with me when I say that the most elementary
subjects in mathematics are best understood. It also seems that these topics
where the first to be discovered, for instance simple algebra. Some topics can 
even be claimed to be fully understood, i.e. there is nothing more to discover.
If we define mathematical complexity of a topic to be the number of less complex
topics upon which it is based, we see an obvious relation between the time of
discovery and the complexity = the older the topic, the less complex. But there
are a few problems with this; mathematics often branch off into topics of equal
complexity. This means that some branches may progress faster than others
depending on the application of the topic. Thus the best way to represent the
developement of mathematics is by a tree like in organic evolution. 

As an analogy, the technological revolution follows a similar pattern although not
as rigidly as in mathematics. The car could not have been invented 10000 years
ago because the car is based on the invention of the wheel, the steam engine,
extraction of steel and so on. Thus, it is reasonable to say that a car is more
complex than a wheel. Now, imagine that you are a young promising student, and
you would like to do a breakthrough in a certain field. That is not an unusual
thought for a student. What field would you consider most likely for you to make
a breakthrough in? Well, the car industry might perhaps be something? Then you
suddenly rememered that the car industry is a well established industry which has
had a 100 years to develop. Chances are that this industry is hard to make
further contribution to, so you pick another field. Then after some reasoning you
conclude that the newer the field, the greater the chance for you to make a
breakthrough since little contribution from other people has yet been made. In
other words, it is easier to go where no man has gone before you because you meet
no competition. 


As I think most of you already have guessed this was yet another analogy for
evolution itself. There is a selective preassure on increased complexity. Since
a specie meets less competition on a higher level of complexity, it obviously has
greater chances for success. Humans are a perfect example of this. We are not
superintelligent beings, we do stupid things etc. etc. But still we are the
smartest specie around and our success is granted...

Now it is time to answer my original questions.
 
Why hasn't life evolved many times on earth?  Of the same reasons why fire and
the wheel hasn't been reinvented. If life started all over again it would
probably resemble some primitive bacteria. And we all know that bacteria are
the most evolved species on earth. They're highly specialized creatures on their
level of complexity. And no newly evolved primitive mumbo-jumbo bacteria could
stand up against the competition of these creatures. They would go inxtinct
before they could say "blob." 

But highly evolved as bacteria are, they couldn't stand a chance if they evolved
into something multicellular of the same reasons as the above.

Now you might argue that a brand new phylum could evolve from bacterias. True but 
things do not point that way. If you take a look at the tree


         \/ | || |\/
          \ \/ \/ /  
           \|/ \|/
            \| |/ 
             \ / 
              |

You see that it narrows in at its origin. I therefore suspect that there fewer
possible solutions the closer the origin you get. And for life on earth this
means that bacteria, for instance, are stuck like hell. They are doomed to be
bacteria until life on earth disappears. Take a look at your skin, your body.
There you see a perfect examply of such a "destiny." Your cells were originally
bacteria. But a long time ago they started to live in symbiosis with each other.
This they did for so long that they became an integrated entity, cells. Then
again cells integrated, which formed larger and more complex entities,
multicellular life. Today we are witness to yet another integration, mankind
itself. We are about to become pieces in a larger machinery, like cells. Mankind
is about to become its own entity, its own individual. Other such entities exists
already. Antsnests and behives act almost like individuals. Thinking
individuals...



This might sound slightly philosophical, but it's only biology.
Comments are appreciated.


Onar.



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