Constraint

Our world is populated by creatures of every variety, using different adaptations to survive in and even thrive in the habitats they call home. If a species cannot adapt to a changing environment it is doomed to extinction. This flexibility to change is necessary then for survival and thus any hindrance or constraint on flexibility should decrease the specie’s chances of survival. Shocking as it may seem, constraints are not only necessary for adaptations to occur but constraint within reason may actually drive adaptation.

In order for species to adapt, the organisms of the species must vary from one another allowing differential reproduction caused by natural selection to favor some traits over others. Those traits that increase the fitness of their organism are thus adaptations. If we took away all constraints there can be no form. Without even the slightest constraints such as base physical laws such as gravity, organisms would be an indiscernible cellular noise. Without form there can be no variation. The molecules of gas in a balloon are as nearly free from constraint. Looking at them, we can describe their state only as a generalization: pressure. There is no form or structure or variation, only average density. Without variation there is nothing on which natural selection can act and thus no adaptations can be formed.

Given too much constraint and a species will fail to adapt to its surroundings, however, given the constraint of body form and structure, small variations can accrue to create adaptations. Arthropods - insects, arachnids, and crustaceans - have become the most successful diversified phyla in the animal kingdom by exploiting the constraint of an exoskeleton. Their building constraint provides a tremendous platform for variation of form and thus makes them highly adaptable to a changing environment.

The Wilted Rose and the Common Pebble

“Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature’s power of selection” (Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 109).

There is beauty in complexity. We admire the wilting rose more than the common pebble. There is beauty in the delicate balance between structure and disorder. In one sentence, albeit a full one, Darwin cements a structure that embraces both the chaotic and the infinite. At first, chaos would seem to belie order, but in an organic system the two are dependent on one another. A cell must be more chaotic than a crystal to be acted upon evolutionarily, yet it must also have enough order to take energy from its surroundings, grow, and reproduce. Although the father of evolution and a functionalist at heart, Darwin here fiddles with a proto-structuralist view, one in which the underlying “physical conditions of life” dictate organization and change. Darwin recognizes the deep relationships between all things and that this interconnectedness stems from the ideal of limitless change and “infinite complexity.” Given a proper dollop of time, “nature’s power of selection” would populate and speciate the globe.

What is most striking is Darwin’s universality. He abandons his pigeons, his finches, and his beetles and applies this beauty of adaptation to all forms. There are no longer any needs for specific anecdotes of variety and speciation. Darwin pans back effortlessly for the reader to gasp at the vista of his theory, universal in scope and replete in form. There is beauty in the structure of a theory that can bind the chaos of our organic world. There is beauty in this complexity.

Recipe for Artificial Life

The Recipe

1. A container
2. A storage of genetic information
3. A metabolism

ETA: 3-10 years according to the AP. Let's hope they do a little more research. (link)

Investigations - Stuart Kauffman

For the past two weeks I have been inching through Investigations by Stuart Kauffman. I am only half way through the work that some have called as influential as Schrodinger's What is Life?, but already I can see for what Kauffman lacks in answers he makes up for in scope. Investigations is a declaration of a journey just begun, one to define a theory of the living organism.

Most simply, Kauffman describes life as any system able to perform autocatalysis and perform a thermodynamic work cycle, that is - a system able to split itself in two and able to extract energy from its surrounding system. On earth all living things possess DNA, the blueprint of the cell; RNA, the cell's messengers of instructions; and proteins, the cell's doers. Kauffman elevates his discussion of a theory of life by positing that these might not be necessary in all forms of life. The current facts presented in a General Biology textbook are merely the rules of Earth Biology, and may not be as pervasive as we have thought. Life is out there, but without a proper theory can we ever truly define it?

Seeing a video by Kauffman on edge.org when I was 17 years old firmly cemented me to a path in biology, be it theoretical or otherwise. His views of a theoretical biology have been just as large an influence on this blog as my own dreams.

To discover the true stuff of life...
If only, if only...