Emergence Inversion: the Genesis of Life

Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson & Roger Vounckx

Abstract

            It is reasonable to suppose that life comes into being through evolutionary emergence from inanimate nature [1], but it is less than obvious what the distinction between these two facets of our environment constitutes. We are aware of an apparently abrupt step between the complexities associated with machine-like systems and those of biological organisms, but the categorical distinction we habitually make between the living and the inert is of its very nature self-referential: living organisms are those which are alive!

            We present a hierarchical bilaterally complementary scheme of rationality [2], which describes entity-ecosystemic coupling in a unified manner throughout the different perceptional scales [1] of nature. Multiple rationally approximate self-stabilized Newtonian potential wells [3] alternate with chaotically complex layers between the global and the local, in a manner which maintains overall hierarchical coherence and stability. Directionally-dependent transit between adjacent wells is through two sequentially appearing styles of complexity, which are related to the Gödel incompletenesses and Turing halting problems described by Haughs and Lange [4] in their studies of ecosystemic evolution. Analog complexity is associated with diffuseness of determinism [3], and digital complexity with rationally incomplete partiality [5, 6]. The multiple-level hierarchies of locally constrained systems give way globally to the relatively simple universal complementarity of Newtonian and Quantum-mechanical inter-dependence [7]. Coherent simultaneity of global and local causalities [8] operates in a manner equivalent to that of the cross-scalarity of animate comprehension [9] in promoting the fusion of adjacent local hierarchical levels into this global simplification.

            Emergence is always from the complex to the simple, and not vice versa, as the complementary concepts of complex and simple exchange their characters when they are viewed from opposite extremes of their complementarity. In a bilateral entity-ecosystemic rationality, emergence can effectively proceed not only from the analogically complex to the digitally complex, but also from the digitally complex to the analogically complex, where the processes correspond in both cases to simplification, albeit along different lines. We consider the perceptionally-scalar relevance of emergence [1], both from and towards analog complexity, and conclude that a complication-consequent evolutionary inversion in the sense of emergence [2] corresponded to the genesis of life, and has led to the traditionally categorical inanimate-animate distinction.

References

[1] Cottam, R., Ranson, W. and Vounckx, R. "Emergence: half a quantum jump?". Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica: Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy, Order. Espoo: Finnish Academy of Technology, 1998, pp. 12-19.

[2] Cottam, R., Ranson, W. and Vounckx, R. "A diffuse biosemiotic model for cell-to-tissue computational closure". Presented at the International Workshop on Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, Indianapolis, USA, 1999. Forthcoming publication in BioSystems.

[3] Cottam, R., Ranson, W. and Vounckx, R. "Diffuse rationality in complex systems". InterJournal of Complex Systems, Article 235, 1998.

[4] Haughs, M. and Lange, H. "Emergence of observational hierarchies in natural evolution". Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica: Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy, Order. Espoo: Finnish Academy of Technology, 1998, pp. 217-227.

[5] Cottam, R., Ranson, W. and Vounckx, R. "A biologically consistent hierarchical framework for self-referencing survivalist computation". Presented at the 3rd International Conference on Computing Anticipatory Systems, Liège, Belgium, 1999. Forthcoming publication by the American Institute of Physics.

[6] Antoniou, I. "Extension of the conventional quantum theory and logic for large systems". Presented at the International Conference: Einstein Meets Magritte, Brussels, Belgium, 1995.

[7] Ranson, W., Cottam, R. and Vounckx, R. "Establishment of a complementary bilateral hierarchical entity-ecosystem rationality". To be presented at the 4th International Conference on Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy and Order, Odense, Denmark, 2000.

[8] Cottam, R., Ranson, W. and Vounckx, R. "Emergence inversion: the genesis of life?". To be presented at the 4th International Conference on Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy and Order, Odense, Denmark, 2000.

[9] Cottam, R., Ranson, W. and Vounckx, R. "A biologically-consistent diffuse semiotic architecture for survivalist information-processing". Presented at the 7th International Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Dersden, Germany, 1999.
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