ResearchPod

Physics, philosophy, and the emergence of life

January 15, 2020
ResearchPod
Physics, philosophy, and the emergence of life
Chapters
ResearchPod
Physics, philosophy, and the emergence of life
Jan 15, 2020
ResearchPod ft Prof Stuart Kauffman
Prof Stuart Kauffman discusses his case for the origins of life of Earth.
Show Notes Transcript

Despite best efforts, the origin of life on Earth remains an open mystery. In a recent analysis bridging physics, evolutionary biology and the philosophy of just what life is, Prof Stuart Kauffman suggests autocatalytic sets of energetically favourable molecules making each other, and in turn themselves, as the building blocks of life as we know it.

His interview touches on the limits of Newtonian and quantum physics, philosophical definitions of life and self, and the Anthropocene era of resource scarcity on a changing planet.

Find out more about Prof Kauffmans work at the Institute for Systems Biology.

Will:
00:14
Hello, I'm will welcome to ResearchPod. In this episode:  
Will:
00:19
The emergence of life on Earth has been characterized by some as a lightning strike, a foaming tide of primordial possibility or a moment of divine inspiration. Despite best efforts, the question has remained open for centuries. In a recent analysis that bridges, physics, philosophy and evolutionary biology, professor Stuart Kauffman suggests the likelihood of energetically favorable groups of molecules synthesizing each other and, in turn, being replicated as his candidate model. If this seems a bit much to get to grips with, he also made a Children's book out of it. So let's start there, Professor, Hello
Prof Kauffman:
00:58
Hello.  
Will:
00:59
A little bit of background for the people at home. You have been a doctor, a scholar, a Professor, a MacArthur fellow and also a children's book author. I've got to ask, Where do you find the time?
Prof Kauffman:
01:10
I just turned 80, Will, so I've had a long time. I've been a scientist since I was 24.
Will:
01:17
Plenty of time to fit in. A great many ,
Prof Kauffman:
01:20
I think so. It's a lot of fun
Will:
01:22
Starting with that Children's book. It deals with maybe one of the more atypical Children's stories about the origin of life, or at least the origin of life as we know it.
Prof Kauffman:
01:33
Yes, it does deal with the origins of life. It starts about 14 hours and 23 minutes after the origin of Life, which took place on a Friday afternoon in 3.7 billion years ago on a little tidal pool in what's now Western Australia. It was a very hot day.
Will:
01:52
Well, at least you've managed to nail down the time and keep things good and punctual. So these proto cells they have the name's Rupert, Sly, Gus and Patrick. If you could tell us maybe a little bit about them, who they are as proto cells and how their experiences together have been an example of, really a lot of your work and a lot of your research over the past couple of years coming together into this very exciting field of where it all began.
Prof Kauffman:
02:17
Let me give you a bit of background before we get to Patrick and Rupert, Sly and Gus. There's a meteorite called the Murchison Meteorite, which landed in Murchison, Australia. I think 1965. It was formed when the solar system was formed. About five billion years ago. It has a high diversity of organic molecules. About 35,000 organic molecules have been detected in the Murchison and recently in the fly by of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The same diversity, maybe higher diversity was found in one of the jets coming out for a month and sell this. This means five billion years ago, probably throughout the entire universe. With something like a 10 raised to the 22 power stars and solar systems, the universe cooked up a complex soup of organic molecules that were spattered around on planets anywhere in the universe. So in a sense the universe was right for the emergence of molecular self reproduction. We don't know how quite how molecular reproduction happens, but I and others have been thinking for years that it emerges with the formation of a set of molecules that can mutually catalyze one another's formation of some simple building blocks. So to use you and me, Will and Ed I catalyzed information of you will out of will hearts, you catalyze the formation of ET out of Ed parts and ed catalysts the formation of me out of stew parts. So that's what I would call a collectively auto candidate set on I did. That's been around for some 50 years. There's now pretty good evidence that molecular reproduction on the Earth did start with small molecule autocratic sets. There's a remarkable article by Joanna Xavier and Bill Martin, now online but not yet published, in which they look at our chaos and bacteria from before. Oxygen was present on the order there for more than two billion years ago. And the analysis of these two steles shows that there's a small molecule auto catalytic set that reproduces itself with no complex problem represented at all. There's no DNA. There's no Arnie. There's no protein, making it very likely that molecular reproduction on Earth started with a What we now call is a metabolic auto caliber. Except I'm telling you something that has not yet been reviewed for publication. But it is available online, and I believe that it's correct. If that's true, then the question becomes, Well, how hard is that? You get a molecular auto candidate set, given that you've got 35,000 organic molecules, we don't know that now. My own guess is that it's probably pretty easy, so that means that about three and 1/2 4 billion years ago on Earth and maybe in the whole universe, reproducing molecular systems of smaller getting molecules and things like iron sulfur complex has emerged that isn't yet life with its molecular reproduction. Then the hope is that gets inside of water. Colitis sums. If you put cholesterol and water, you get little hollow vesicles called lifer sums. And they can but and divide and the dream unconfirmed yet is that if you get a molecular reproducing system like a metabolic out of context set inside of the life of some, you're on your way to a proto cell, and then you need polymers like proteins and so on. And there's theories about that, so that gets us with a squint on Ah, hope to protest sells somewhere in some warm little pool in Australia or in deep sea events. So I've located the story of Patrick and friends in a small pool not far from a volcano in Australia on a Friday afternoon, so that sets it up.
Will:
06:20
Forgive me if I get this completely wrong, because it's been a long time since I did any chemistry whatsoever. My understanding of physics of molecules was the pursuit of the lowest energy state on that. Having an order catalytic cept Does that mean that the catalyst molecules that they have assembled and continue assembling are a preferential energy state or the raw building materials that doesn't require a little extra kick to get them going?
Prof Kauffman:
06:45
Well, fundamentally, of course, molecules at their lowest energy state typically. But this is an open flow system. So let me, Let's define chemically Librium. Living things are not a chemically Librium. There's a constant flow off stuff into you and out of you eat food and you eliminate waste. That's the living. Things are displaced for chemical equilibrium. So here's a chemically delivery, but I've got chemical X that changes into a chemical. Why and why Changes back to X equilibrium is when the ratio of X and Y are such that their average concentrations don't change in time exchanges to why the white changes back Dex and they reach it. Delivering depending how fast is to reversible. Operations are so that's chemically Librium. Life is displaced from equilibrium by a continuous inflow of food and energy and on the flux of waste products. So the chemistry's fine will. It's It's the Life and then our non equilibrium
Will:
08:00
in the story of Patrick Protest selling all of his chums some of these guys that you end up becoming food to themselves.
Prof Kauffman:
08:07
Well, they do a deep issued that we're addressing this to falling. Let me let me back up,
Will:
08:14
please.
Prof Kauffman:
08:14
So everybody knows Newton, Ah, fine. Englishmen and Newton invest differential equations and integration. Newton gives us three laws of motion and universal gravitation, and Newton literally invented how we think a scientist sensitive and we can call it the Newtonian paradigm. So think of billiard balls on the table and we asked Newton What's going to happen? Do? Newton says. I wrote down these differential equations. Please give the forces between the billiard balls as they bounce around and they bounce off the boundaries of the of your table called the boundary Conditions. Please write down my differential equations, giving the force of the balls when they hit into one another, which is essentially their mo mentum. Having written down the equations and the boundary conditions state, the initial conditions of the balls that sensitive positions and momenta on the table and boundary conditions of the table that police integrate by equations and you will obtain the trajectories of the balls on the table for all time. Ignoring friction now to integrate Newton's equations is to deduce the consequences of the differential equations through the trajectories and deduction is entail mint. So Newton's laws entail logically the trajectories of the balls. Well, that becomes all of classical physics. That is way we've been taught to think so that becomes the DEA stick God of the Enlightenment, in which God sets up the universe and Newton's laws and then news Los takeover. And with that, you can have no miracles. So we haven't struggled between science and religion and miracles and so on. That gives a student which is determinism. So this is terribly important because we have all of classical physics from Newton. Then there's an enormous crisis in physics when quantum mechanics is discovered by plant in 1900 that that entails on in determining when I think your listeners never this where you have ah, radioactive nucleus, it decays, decays randomly in time, implying there's simply no causal account when it decays. That's the in determinism of quantum mechanics. This was an enormous crisis in physics in the 1910 to 1935 era, Einstein always rejected, even though he proposed the law for the photo electric effect. Einstein struggled with the in determinism of quantum mechanics, did end of his days. But quantum mechanics has one, Einstein turns out, have been wrong about some critical things called quantum non locality. Even though we have in determinism, which was a big crisis in physics, we still have laws. It's called the Schrodinger Equation, and the Schrodinger equation is exactly within the Newtonian framework. Shorting your equation is a linear wave equation, and it's deterministic. Just flight Newton. However, instead of Newton, it gives the deterministic evolution of a probability distribution that something will happen then happening. It's got to measure. So up until about 5 to 10 years ago, the standard framework, the main framework in science, was invented by Newton. Its laws, initial and boundary conditions integrate Inc to get the movement of the system over time. Whether it's the whole universe, that's that's the plus in about 18 10 or all of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory and the standard model of particle physics. Well, we're facing another crisis that that's actually what we're talking about. Will and the crisis is the following in what I've told you so far, there are laws. And then I failed to mention that there's been doubts about reductionist, and this is reductionism. It's the view that there's laws down there that until everything that comes to being universe, the first doubts about that were by Phil Anderson, about 1975 a Nobel laureate who wrote on article More is different in science. I guess it's 1977 and what Anderson argued was maybe properties emerge at higher levels. For example, from quantum mechanics. You cannot predict the wetness of water and what what is called the Na'vi or Stokes equation for in compressible fluid flow? Anderson. You're another Nobel laureate. A. Robert Lockwood argue that there may be higher level laws that emerge above the lowest level. That may be, or may not be derive a bill from the lower level law so emergency would be really. But it's even more powerful than that, and the more powerful from that is due to what we're talking about in 2012 at the Ecole Normale Superieure here in Paris and his then student bile motive. Ill and I published paper whose title is no entailing laws but enablement in the evolution of the bias. Sir, I think we're right, will. And if we are right, it is a crisis in physics as big as or bigger than quantum mechanics. Strangely enough, because in the case of quantum mechanics, you could debate whether or not all the laws were still reducible to the Newtonian framework. If we're right, there's no laws whatsoever for the evolution of life for the detailed evolution of life. So in the absence of any laws, those laws can't be reduced to physics. The becoming of the bias here is beyond physics. Uh, this is the big thing that we're really talking about. Patrick and Rupert and Sly and dust are an example of it. So perhaps I can elaborate on that.
Will:
14:30
Elaboration would be very welcome.
Prof Kauffman:
14:33
It isn't becoming of life is beyond the Newtonian paradigm of loss and entailing conditions, given the initials of the boundary conditions.
Will:
14:43
So there's the possibility that at the underlying level of everything consequence and cause lose any kind of connection on what we have is just kind of this potential and actual mush.
Prof Kauffman:
14:56
It's not the case that cause loses its meaning, but as just 70 would have it for Newton causes. Did you deterministic becoming of the universe in the evolution of the Blaster? We can't have that entail becoming, but we could still have a notion because it's a differential effect. But let me go ahead. So this makes sense. That all sounds like trouble. So let's raise the following question. Human beings have the human heart, so we can ask, Why do hearts exists in the universe? Parts of very complicated things. To get to the impact of this question, I have toe take a slightly strange pathway. The universe starts with courts of good ones roughly 14 billion years ago, and electrons and positrons and tree knows stuff like that. And then we get the big Bang and we get the synthesis of hydrogen and helium. Then we get the synthesis in the stars of the nuclei of the stable atoms. Then we start to get chemicals being synthesized. So the central chemicals of biochemistry or carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur. Once you've got those atoms in the universe, you begin to make complex molecules and not just the organic molecules that with all the molecules. So we can now ask the funny question. The universe has had time, and it's almost 14 billion years to make all possible stable nuclei that hasn't had time to make all possible pop ups, molecules, any standing fingers. He has much let me shave is to quite simply, a protein is a string of amino acids hooked together by peptide bombs, a typical protein and you has 300 amino acids. There's 20 kinds of amino acids, so let's just ask her proteins. Light still 100. How many possible proteins are there? Where's 20 kinds of amino acids and position? One position to position three after 200. So there's 20. Race to the 2/100 power possible proteins. Length. 200 Well 22. The 2/100 is about 10 to the daughter 60th which is a really large number to compare it. The number of particles in the universe is tended. The 80th well tended the 260. There's an awful lot larger. The intended the 80th. Now the fastest time scale in the universe is the plank time scale of 10 to the minus 43rd seconds. And if us could the tender the 80th particles doing nothing on each plank time moment that making proteins like 200 How long would it take the universe to make all possible? Tend to the 260th possible proteins? Lights 200 it turns out it would take the age of the universe, say, 14 billion years, two times 10 to the 37th power. That means the universe cannot have made all possible Protein Lake 200 and that means something very fundamental. Let me introduce the notion of the work here. Got IQ. It just means that the system conduce you all of it's possible things in the time available. So gas does that in a small box. It means that the universe is vastly non air. Got IQ that levels of complexity like complex molecules. That means the universe will never made all possible complex things. And, in fact, recent work might. My friend Gabor Blackie says the universe is not our got IQ above the level of about molecules of the $500 loans, which adult is, Ah, wait of the hydrogen? Because so the universe is grotesquely none are got it. But that then raises the question. Why are their hearts? Most complex things won't exist where their hearts in the universe and that not becomes a profound question. So let's ask how that can possibly be true. One of the answers is that organisms exist and organisms existed. For example, since vertebrates with hearts exists, hearts existed. And now why are there vertebrates? Well, that's the origin of life. So let me tell you what a continent hole is. It's less mysterious, that sound. But the amazing philosopher Kat, I guess in about 17 90 unorganized being has the property that the parts exist for and by means of the whole. So you are content hole.
Will:
19:40
I've been called west.
Prof Kauffman:
19:41
Your parts exist for it by means of you. Your heart exists because it sustains you is an organism, and you just because of your heart, your liver and all the restaurant here. But so soon, auto candidates set that we were talking about before. By the way, auto candidate sets have been made out of out of small proteins, so you get an auto caliber set of proteins going on. Ashkenazy has won nine proteins in very that means, by the way, that molecular reproduction does not require Dina or are in a so the insistence that life depends upon nuclear gas. IDs is wrong. It need not, although it may anyway, once you have an auto carrick set, it's a continent hole. So take the case of stew, Will and Ed. I catalyze the formation of you out of will parts. You catalyze the formation of head of the bed part it catalyze the formation of two of its two parts. No, one of this catalyze is our own formation. The function of a part in an auto candidate set is to sustain the hole. So the function of one of the nine peptides and guns out account set is to catalyze the formation of the next step tight around the cycle not to giggle water in the Petri plate. Already, you can't reduce biology to physics because in physics you could talk about all the coastal concept quinces, but not specify function. You've got function and therefore autocratic sets, gets us to Patrick and that Patrick evils and becomes more complex with Rupert and so on until we have proto cells and single cell organisms like bacteria like E. R. K. I ventured in the RK, have complex molecules, and then one of those complex molecules exist in the nine or got a universe of low $500. It's because their parts of auto count of existence that bring forth in the universe complicated things like hearts. So we haven't got to There's no deductive law will get there in a moment. But a simple take seriously, the puzzle of why they're our hearts. You see that in an honor? Got it, universe living things bring forth complex proteins that could not exist to her life not to exist. So weird, cause buckle before I get to you cannot have laws for it. But is this making sense?
Will:
22:01
It's a bit much to take in all at once, but I'm gonna have plenty of time to listen back to this as I edit. So I'm sure after the third or fourth time through, I'll be ableto just about makes sense that where I am,
Prof Kauffman:
22:11
I'm sorry, but I need to tell you a little bit more. Can I go ahead?
Will:
22:16
Oh, please do. I will just sit back and enjoy the ride, if that's all right.
Prof Kauffman:
22:21
Yeah, I know. Be quiet with eternity. Book conversation I've started will quote the corner of a professor, Get a lecture. So let me just talk about jury rigging. So jury rigging has to do with taking things and using them for purposes for which they were not invented. And it turns out it happens in evolution all the time. Real biological evolution. Darwin called them pre adaptations. Some fish have a sudden bladder that has air in water in the bladder, which tunes neutral buoyancy mean in the water column. Get involved from fish that have lungs hopping from public. The puddle and water got into some lung Your function of your hardest, the pump blood. But Darwin said, you know, a cost of consequence of your heart of no advantage in the current environment could become useful in another environment and be selected. My ridiculous example is your heart is a ah, a resident chamber. The function of the hardest to pump blood, not make heart sounds. I at 80 have a dominant mutation such that my heart can pick up earthquake re Kremer's lying in Los Angeles and there's a pre tremor for Earthquake and I rush outside and I survived. Everybody else dies, but I become famous as I survived and women flocked on my side on my Nate with many. And Ferguson. There's earthquake detectors in the bias here, so that's a Darwinian pre adaptation. So that's what happened with the SIM bladder. Now we come to the problem. Could you pre state, Could you say now, all pre adaptations that will happen to human beings in our evolution in the next couple 1,000,000 years? Can you feel the question?
Will:
24:04
I can feel it, but I feel like that would be a gross of the statement of the laws of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Because if you're tryingto fit for every possible eventuality, then you end up with just wide variety shortly,
Prof Kauffman:
24:17
right? It took a long time to find in this to this argument, but let me let me try it on. These are new uses of things in organisms, So an example would just tied to the dreaming. I'm gonna give you a screwdriver making all of the engine in the screwdriver.
Will:
24:35
Are we counting only the legal options or
Prof Kauffman:
24:38
no, no, no. Anything, including stuff. Okay?
Will:
24:43
Well, to save incriminating myself for giving away who banks he really is. I think I better leave most of that left and said,
Prof Kauffman:
24:50
You can screw in a screw. You can unscrew a screw. You could scrape putty off the window. You can tie it to a stick and spirits. Oh sh you can read the spirit with locals and take 5% of the catch. So that's all perfectly dead. He uses the screwdriver so we not get to something very funny. I was seriously asking. Well, I've asked lots of people. Do you think the number of uses of a screwdriver in London today is infinite, Or is it a specific number like, say, 73 uses? Or is it indefinite?
Will:
25:27
I'd have to go with indefinite because as soon as someone sees something, there's imitation and variation on the theme
Prof Kauffman:
25:33
right, and everybody agrees with indefinite. It's not infinite because it's not an inter procedure like 10 to 11 to 12. So the next point that I need to make is there's four kinds of ordering. All relationships in mathematics is what's called a nominal scale, just the names of things like our names there's, ah scale. That X is greater than the one i n y is greater than Z, so that's transitive exes than greater. There's an interval scale, like a thermometer where one degree and two degrees are different than zero, degree said. A Greater Fahrenheit. Judah's meaning. There's a racial scale like meter states. So what kind of a scale or uses the screwdrivers? We'll just a nominal scale. They're different uses, but there's no ordinary relationship among those, so that means something important. It means that there is no algorithm. There's no rule following procedure taken, list all the uses of screwdrivers, nor list the next new use of a screwdriver. And that's what's going on with Darwinian. Create upped ations. They are new uses of things for some purposes that allows the organism to survive. And you cannot say ahead of time what those uses are. You cannot pre stated, and that's going to get us to the big conclusion that long ago and motive ill and I came to in physics. Oh, I've been said that said, in physics you could always pre state the face space, so when you got the billiard balls on the table given the table on the boundary conditions, you know all possible positions and Momenta of the bolts on the table. So that's the face space in the same street. Statistical mechanics. We don't know what the face spaces and biological evolution, because the functions of slings are part of a face space of biological evolution, the function of your hardest to pump blood. And that's why you're alive. So it's not trivial, so we're just happy. And my island, I realize, is that in the evolution of the last year, functions are part of the face space of biological evolution. But we don't know what that face spaces. We don't know what I call the adjacent possible of the bias areas. And here's the crux point. We cannot write down something like Newton did. Newton's laws are cold loss of ocean. We can write down no laws whatsoever for the becoming of the biased, because we don't know what the relevant variables are. We didn't know about hearing three billion years ago. We didn't know about the fact that the elephants trump reaches the ground and it could squirt water on itself, which is part of why it survives over 3.7 billion years ever knew UN priest A. Doble functions evolve into the biosphere and change its face space in ways that we cannot restate. Therefore, we cannot know the face space of biological evolution. That means that we can't write down equations the way you did. And we don't have equations and differential equation for we can't integrate them. Therefore, there's no laws whatsoever for the evolution of the last year, which is part of why there are human hearts of the nine or Gothic universe. Maybe you could not begin to steal it. Well, it's really big. There are no laws whatsoever. You know, we might be wrong, but I don't think so for the specific evolution of the bias here on this planet. And if there are bio spheres around in the tent of the 22 solar systems that are estimated in the universe, which is beginning to appear likely biases air creating all this complexity, and you can't deduce it from visits at all. It's based on physics, but it's beyond physics,
Will:
29:23
I wrote, nudging up against irreducible complexity here.
Prof Kauffman:
29:27
Absolutely. It's irreducible complexity, and we don't need in the irreducible complexity we don't need intelligent design? No. So that's the end of my lecture. I'm sorry, but it's 40 years of thinking
Will:
29:42
if I could get 40 years of thinking, squeeze down in tow, 40 minutes of conversation that I think that's a pretty fair ratio,
Prof Kauffman:
29:48
that's a good race. That's what Patrick it guys roll out. So Patrick gets stuck to a rock because he's got a little peptide that sticks out of them. And because Patrick is in a lagoon with slowly flowing food, the fact that he gets stuck with the rock means that he gets more food per unit time than when he was just floating free. So Patrick has become be first Cecil Filter feeder in the universe. It's a cyst. All contributing is emerged in the universe, and he's Patrick the first that he's a very sweet little guy. So the point is, Well, what equations would you write down for the fact that Patrick, by sticking to Iraq, became the first Cecil Filter Peter in the universe? You can't. But he did become the first Cecil Filter feeder in the universe on a Monday afternoon when the sun was shining
Will:
30:41
and they're the grander ecosystem and food chain can explode with possibility around him.
Prof Kauffman:
30:47
Absolutely. That's why I'm very fund of Patrick and Rupert and slammed us. And so now you've got this ecosystem at organisms create knishes for one another, and goods and service is creating dishes for one another and possible knishes air exploding faster than the things that occupy them. So the bias or explodes a complexity upward in four billion years to create all this stuff that's around even more overwhelming. Well, we're killing middle. Did you see the U. N report? About 2050 20% of all species will be one.
Will:
31:23
Unfortunately, I did.
Prof Kauffman:
31:25
It's overwhelming well that the global economy at 100 trillion a year and growing, Forker said, is lifting millions of people out of property, and it's destroying the planet. We're aware of global warming, but we're not aware of the extinction event. It's overwhelming. It's the biggest problem humanity's ever confronted.
Will:
31:44
In a complex world such as ours, when there are a finite resource, is the value inherent in any life that exists within this ecosystem? Being able to see the big picture is a very important and very overlooked trait, so thank you so much for all of your work in generating this very, very big picture.
Prof Kauffman:
32:01
Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad we've had this time. I'm sorry that I just talked, but somehow needed to get that across
Will:
32:09
again. If it takes 40 years to get to this conversation, someone listening to it can get to the end in 40 minutes. I think we're doing everyone else a big favor.
Prof Kauffman:
32:17
It's a 12 and terribly important.
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