Chapter 45 home in the universe

home in the universe Science talks about many things, Farmer said.Science is the systematic accumulation of facts and data, the logical and coherent theoretical construction of these facts, and the discovery of new materials, new drugs, and new technologies. But at its core, science is about explaining the world.The story of science is an explanation of how and why the world is the way it is.The scientific story, like the old explanations of the creation mystery, the epic, and the mythical tale, helps us understand ourselves and our relationship to the universe.The story of science explains how the universe came into being in the Big Bang 15 billion years ago; explains how quarks, electrons, neutrons, and everything else splattered in the Big Bang to form protoplasm, which was indescribably hot , how these particles gradually solidified into the galaxies, stars and planets we see today; the story of science also tells us that the sun is a star like other stars, and the earth is a planet like other planets Same.Life on earth was born four billion years ago in the geological period, and we humans were born in the savannah of Africa 30 million years ago, and then labor tools, culture and language slowly emerged.

Now we have this story of complexity again.Farmer said: "I almost took it as a religious question. As a physicist and a scientist, my greatest desire has always been the desire to understand the universe in which I live. To my pantheist nature is God. So I get closer to God by learning about nature. I actually never dreamed that I would get a job as a scientist until my third year in graduate school. I just did what I did and didn't think of it as a Join a monastery." "So the questions we're asking about how did life arise and why living systems are the way they are are really about understanding who we are and what makes us different from inanimate matter. The more you know, the closer you get to fundamental questions like 'What is the purpose of life?' In the current scientific field, it is impossible for us to answer these kinds of questions head-on, but we can ask different questions, such as why things don't work. Restrained complexity? We may learn some fundamental characteristics of life from this, and thus understand the purpose of life, just as Einstein understood the nature of space and time by understanding the gravity of the earth. This reminds me of the transference in astronomy The metaphor of line of sight: If you want to see a very faint star clearly, then your line of sight should be slightly shifted, because your eyes will become more sensitive to the weak light. As long as you face this a faint star, and it disappears."

Likewise, Farmer says, what is needed to understand the inexorably growing complexity is not a complete scientific theory of morality.But if the new second law can help us understand who we are, the whole process that gives us our brains and our social structure, it could enable us to know more about morality than ever before. "Religion imposes morality on people by engraving it on stone. We have such a practical problem now, because if we do away with normal religion, we don't know what else to follow. But if you strip away religion and moral rules, you find that they provide the structure of human behavior that enables society to function. I feel that all morality functions at this level. It is an evolutionary process in which society often Experiments of all kinds, whether they succeed or fail, will determine future cultural thought and ethics." If so, he says, a theory that could explain why co-evolving systems lead to the brink of chaos, can provide a powerful explanation for its cultural dynamics and why societies can strike that elusive, ever-changing equilibrium between freedom and control.

Langton said: "I've made a lot of purely speculative conclusions about what all of this means. I've come to these conclusions by looking at the world through these mirrors of phase transitions. Observation of things, and will find that it applies everywhere." He said that the collapse of the communist system in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries made it impossible for him not to associate the whole situation at that time with the power-law distribution of stability and instability on the edge of chaos. "If you look at it from this angle, then the Cold War period was actually a situation in which things stagnated for a long time. Although the United States and the Soviet Union aimed their guns at the head of the world in this way. It is very dangerous, but this is to prevent the destruction of both sides. The only way around the world. At that time, the world was very stable. But now that period of stability is over, and there is unrest in the Balkans and elsewhere, I am more worried about what is going to happen, because in the simulated model, Once you get beyond these periods of metastabilization, you get into a period of great change and volatility, where the potential for wars, some of which could lead to world wars, is much higher. The situation is more sensitive now than it was before."

"So what exactly is the right course of action? I don't know. I just know it's like a punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary history. It wouldn't have happened without a mass extinction, and it doesn't have to be. A further step in a better direction. Some computer models suggest that the species that dominate during the period of stability after the upheaval may not be better than the species that dominated before the upheaval. So this period of evolutionary change could be a very bad period .This may be the time when the United States disappears as a superpower on the international stage, but who knows what will emerge from the other extreme?"

"What we have to do is to decide whether we can apply the concept of punctuated equilibrium to the interpretation of history. If we can, whether we also see this kind of punctuated equilibrium in history, such as the decline of the Roman Empire. Because at that time, humans were indeed in the process of evolution. If we really study the process of the decline of the Roman Empire, we may be able to integrate the concept of punctuated equilibrium with political, social and economic theory. In this way, we can understand We have seen that we have to be very careful to come to some kind of global agreement and covenant to get through history safely. But the question is, do we want to control our own evolution? If so, can our control stop evolution? Evolution always A good thing. If single-celled objects could find a way to stop evolving and remain their dominant life form, we humans wouldn't be here. So you don't really want to stop evolving. But on the other hand, maybe you want Learn how you can avoid killing and extinction and keep evolution going."

"Evolution hasn't stopped, and that's perhaps the lesson we should take away from it," Langton said. "Evolution continues, and in addition to the massive social and cultural changes that are taking place now, evolution presents many of the same phenomena as biological history. Maybe we'll be able to see a lot of extinctions and upheavals like this." “I can partially answer what that means,” Kaufman said. He’s been thinking a lot lately, and for good reason. Shortly after Thanksgiving in 1991, he and his wife were seriously injured in a car accident and nearly died, only to recover months later.

"If, assuming the model of life's origin is correct, then life is not suspended in equilibrium, life did not arise because some warm pond accidentally replicated molecular templates such as DNA or RNA. Life should Is a natural manifestation of complex matter. It is a deep feature of chemical and catalytic coordination, which is far from equilibrium. It means that the universe is our home, and we are inevitable. How comforting! This The point of view is far from the image of living organisms as crudely patched devices, unnamed new products of all specific ingredients superimposed together. In this image of the emergence of life as an accident, there is a lack of The laws of biology are deeper than random variation and natural selection. In this sense, the universe is not our inevitable home.”

"Furthermore, suppose you come back many years later, after the autocatalytic groups have formed mutual co-evolutionary, mutual-spraying symbol sequences, and you will find that the things that still exist are those Competitiveness, things that can interact, have food chains and co-existence. What you see are the things that create this symbiotic world. It makes me think that the world we live in is what we create We are characters in this ever-evolving story, we are part of the universe, you, me, and the goldfish, and together we create this co-existing world.” "Let us now assume that coevolved complex systems are indeed capable of self-tending to the brink of chaos, much like Gaia, an attraction, a state of our collective self-sustainment characterized by perpetual change. In this In the state, old species are often extinct and new species are constantly emerging. If we really think of this as an economic system, it is that new technologies are constantly emerging and replacing old technologies. If this is true, then That means, on average, reaching the brink of chaos is what we do best. In a sense, this ever-open, ever-changing world we are destined to create for ourselves is the best we can do .”

Kaufman said: "This is a story about ourselves. Matter is doing its best to evolve in the best direction, and the universe is our inevitable home. But it does not mean once and for all, because there is a lot of pain. You will be wiped out." , would break apart physically and mentally. But we're on the brink of chaos right now because that's where we can be at our best."