The presence of life in the universe requires an explanation for a contradiction that is difficult to resolve. We have evidence that the ea...
The presence of life in the universe requires an explanation for a contradiction that is difficult to resolve. We have evidence that the earliest forms of life appeared quite soon after the birth of the forming Earth, as if the emergence of life as we know it were a necessary consequence of the chemical processes on a planet that has conditions suitable for sustaining life. However, by contradiction, we are discovering more and more celestial bodies, with the help of astronomical observations, that appear to be capable to provide conditions suitable for life, basically rocky planets on whose surface liquid water is very likely to existing, yet, we do not detect any signs or traces of life, whether primitive or advanced, on these celestial bodies. How is it possible that, if the emergence of life seems necessary on a suitable celestial body, we do not see it existing on other Earth-like planets?
There are several theories to explain this situation, starting with the statement that it is not at all certain that life formed elsewhere will produce signs that we think we need to search for, similar to those produced by life on Earth. Or perhaps life, as a necessary consequence of its complexity and hence fragility, ceases to exist due to some external or internal cataclysm, even by the appearance of the intelligent lifeforms that develop as a result of life's evolution enable themselves to destroy themselves and, along with themselves, the entire biosphere that has developed. Or perhaps the intelligent form of life surviving deliberately hides itself and its habitat as a defense against external recognition and influence.
Countless other possibilities can be thought of, but the example of Earth proves that life in the form of a biosphere adapts effectively to changes in the conditions of its existence, and carries signs of its presence recognizable from outside even over galactic time scales. Why, then, do we not observe life elsewhere in the universe? Why does life seem to be so rare, only one we know of? A seemingly present aspect that has received less attention thus far may provide a suitable explanation.
It seems necessary that the natural formation of life must be the result of chemical processes. The complexity resulting from the interactions between different chemical elements can naturally create the diversity and variability of dynamic structures necessary for the formation of life: can create the non-equilibrium systems that function in an evolutionary manner.
Chemical processes operate according to well-known physical laws, based fundamentally on the course of possible molecular interactions, which are executed according to the random rules of chance of proper orientation of collisions. And random-based systems are limited only by time. In any random system, if sufficient time is available, all possible processes occur, and all possible states arise. However, when a system is random, and the emergence of a specific state in a random system requires the simultaneous presence of states that change in opposite directions, the occurrence of such a state in a random system will consequently be limited, and therefore, such a state of the system will necessarily be a rare state.
If it could be concluded that the natural emergence of life is the result of a random system where the interaction of opposing processes results in the formation of the living state, then this could explain why life is rare, i.e., although a system capable of supporting life can exist for a long time, the chances of life emerging in the system are still small.
The obviously necessary conditions for the natural formation of life are well known. Fundamentally, a liquid medium, most suitably liquid water, is required on a rocky planet where sufficient quantities of the basic elements necessary for the formation of complex molecules that build up the complex system of life can be found, primarily compounds of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and a few other elements. In such an environment, chemical reactions can take place with an intensity that depends on the concentration of source material and the amount of environmental energy available, creating increasingly complex carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of life, from which the complex, distinct, dynamic structures of life, the molecular factories, are formed.
However, these molecular systems, which can be considered alive, are complex and hence obviously vulnerable and sensitive to environmental conditions even in their primitive state. These complex systems can only survive in limited environmental conditions that do not threaten their fragile complexity.
The development of the complex system of living organisms therefore requires, on the one hand, a dynamic environment rich in chemical processes, where diverse complex molecules can be created in large quantities and across a wide physical range, however in the other hand, for the increasingly complex systems formed from these complex molecules, which realize the living state, an environment rich in energy and intense chemical reactions is dangerous due to their sensitivity to external influences, as it causes them to disintegrate. This is why scientists believe that life on Earth may have originated near the energy-rich environment of underwater volcanic vents, from where the forming components necessary for life could migrate to less intense environments and create the complex state of life. However, these mutually exclusive, suitable locations would have had to be widespread and widely present for complex living systems to develop spontaneously.
In order for life to develop, an environment conducive to the most intense chemical reactions possible is needed, but at the same time, a much less intense, consolidated environment is also needed, where the necessary complexity can form and survive. Life is a complex system based on chance-driven chemical processes, so for life to develop naturally, the right conditions must exist for a sufficiently long period of time. There must be a continuous and proper consolidation of the environmental circumstances when living organisms develop from inorganic matter, creating the necessary conditions during and following the period of intense chemical reactions when the already complex, and therefore sensitive system forms its structure directed by natural evolution, which then becomes capable of adapting to changes by creating a biosphere.
The emergence of life requires a state rich in intense chemical reactions, but the increasingly complex structure that would develop is increasingly sensitive to the environment, meaning that the structure requires a specific environmental condition in order to survive. These processes are based on mutually exclusive conditions, so the emerging state resulting from these processes is necessarily rare.
On Earth, all this most likely happened naturally, guided by chance, through the favorable consolidation of circumstances, which is why we believe that life should inevitably arise in other places that offer suitable conditions for a long period of time. However, a single example is not necessarily the rule. If opposing processes must be present at the same time for a condition to develop, because of these processes can only exist simultaneously for a short period of time, the result of that these processes can produce is necessarily a rare state, and the result of this rule that we can observe in the absence of recognizable signs of life on planets that appear to be suitable to sustain the living state.
And it is not only the emergence of life that is necessarily a rare chance-based event, but also the emergence of intelligence seems to be as well.
Many conditions must coincide for intelligence to emerge, and these conditions existed on Earth, most presently in the case of humanoids. The most defining factor of high intelligence is fundamentally the development of the capable brain, a controlling organ with appropriately high complexity, consequently, in the form of a large dimension in relation to body size in humans, compared to other animals.
Some random genetic mutations must have occurred in one of our hominid ancestors, resulting in increasing brain size, most significantly in the size of the prefrontal cortex. The increasing size of the brain resulted in an obvious evolutionary advantage due to increased cognitive potential, so the genetic change that increases brain size was able to persist.
However, the increasing brain size also led to states that counteracted brain growth. Since being born with an increasingly larger brain required additional physiological evolutionary changes, after a while, evolution no longer transformed the female body to allow for giving birth to the newborn with a larger brain, but instead, an increasing part of physical development took place after birth.
Human newborns require the longest period of care in the animal kingdom due to their relatively underdeveloped brains at birth and also due to the significant amount of learning required to acquire the knowledge necessary for independent living, rather than simply getting the required knowledge through biological inheritance. The increase in cognitive abilities and the increasingly complex social and communal life enabled this longer-term care to be possible. However, being born less and less developed is obviously an evolutionary disadvantage as well, which can only be compensated for by increasing cognitive abilities, i.e., greater brain volume, which are opposing processes and hence, necessarily resulting in the state of rarity.
The emergence of intelligence in living organisms is not a necessity, but rather the result of the random development of natural evolution that forms an ever-increasing complexity. Complexity necessarily increases continuously in evolutionary systems, but the development of intelligence, which provides an evolutionary competitive advantage, also represents an evolutionary competitive disadvantage, which can only be compensated for to a certain extent by the development of communities and societies. Hence, in the course of continuing evolution, the growth of our individual intellectual abilities has also come to a halt, and there is even evidence that we have already regressed in terms of brain size.
Similar to Earth, it can be assumed that the development of intelligence in general is the result of opposing processes in living organisms, and therefore, its appearance is necessarily rare. Perhaps this is the reason why we do not see the recognizable signs of intelligence in other places of the universe.
Furthermore, might not only the existence of life and intelligence be a rare occurrence in the universe because of the requiredly present opposing processes, but so is the existence of technological civilization.
The existence of technological civilization is a consequence of the functioning of intelligent species, and the reason for its development is its evolutionary competitive advantage. In the environment of the Earth, the intelligent human species has reached the level of technological civilization, whose form of development is increasingly being taken over by intentional, directed evolution rather than the randomness of changes. However, the existence of highly developed technological civilizations is also recognizably the result of mutually opposing processes, so the existence of technological civilizations is presumably necessarily rare.
As technological civilization develops, the increasing amount of information accumulated from the functioning of evolution enables the intelligent species to attain ever greater knowledge. However, this ever-increasing knowledge also allows the intelligent species for ever deeper and wider exploitation of the immediate, necessarily present social environment, and the broader, natural environment, the biosphere as well. Our intelligent human species, which has developed through natural evolution, is fundamentally unable to prevent the problems that can arise from our functioning due to the inheritance of our evolutionary characteristics, mostly because of our self-preserving greediness and selfishness. Seemingly, we are unable to solve problems effectively by foresight; we are capable of solving problems that we have already caused, which, however, often lead to the emergence of new, typically even greater problems.
The greater our potential through technological development, the more we can exploit our environment, and the more we believe that we must exploit our environment in order to survive. We are exploiting our environment with our ever-growing knowledge and technology, and the more we do so, the more dangerous we become to our own survival, as exploitation makes our own and wider environment increasingly difficult to sustain our technological civilization.
The human race is potentially capable of eternal life through technological civilization, as it can generally be stated that technological civilization can potentially exist forever through directed evolution; however, we do not see the existence of other technological civilizations in the universe. As can be seen from our own example, the existence of a highly developed technological civilization is clearly the result of conflicting processes and is therefore a rare phenomenon. This, in turn, foreshadows the fate of the human race, which has developed into a technological civilization and continues to evolve, but has not yet achieved highly developed eternal life.
However, we definitely can possess the conscious choice given to us by reason. Perhaps, we hope, we can be similarly the naturally present rare state of technical civilization, just as life and intelligence, which exist so far, are existing rare states on Earth as well. But we have to recognize that we need to do it consciously.
We are exceptional, as evidenced by our existing rarity. As a living, socially organized, intelligent species in the form of a technological civilization, it is now up to us if we can preserve our rare state, guard and maintain the opposing processes necessary to form a highly developed existence for a sufficient period of time to achieve a life that is stable enough for our eternal survival.
We have not yet encountered anything similar existing outside, except the controversial existence of God, so the responsibility of our rare state is enormous in order to fulfill the opportunity as a civilization offered by evolution for us in the universe.
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