Why does life evolve, this physicist belives he has an answer to that question:

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Here's the article:

http://www.businessinsider.com/groundbreaking-idea-of-lifes-origin-2014-12

From the article:

Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.

You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant, England said.

Englands theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations. I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong, he explained. On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.

It is nice to have a more profound explaination for the evolution of life than mere accident. :). We'll see how his idea pans out.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Not really different from "mere accident" if there is no intelligent design behind it.

Why do atoms react in this way? Because the physical laws of the Universe (by accident) force them to do so.

So the problem is just deferred.

[Crom Dubh]

Why is it a problem that such things happen without intelligent design? Seems thinking about it that way presupposes that some sort of intelligent design, or underlying reason, must exist. Which is, of course, not an actual necessity.

[Ken Stone]

So pretty much any attempt we make to cut our energy usage is bound to fail, based on physics.

[Stubby]

This is an interesting development.

The hypothesis is going to take some testing though. But I predict much wailing and gnashing of teeth if it is true.

[Gears of the Beast]

I love how religionists are still parroting this 'mere accident' nonsense as if the notion that there is no providential purpose is unsettling, almost like they're announcing their need to be coddled by a nice sounding story

"Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word “accident” has meaning." - Nietzsche

[TrueMetis]

Isn't this really more about abiogenesis than evolution?

[Stubby]

Isn't this really more about abiogenesis than evolution?

It's exactly about abiogenesis more than evolution. I suspect the journalist, like many commentors these days, didn't appreciate the difference.

[Shryke]

Yeah, past-abiogenesis the "why" of evolution becomes rather obvious. Why wouldn't it?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I simply find it interesting that there may be reasonable phyisical explaination for abiogensis. Now if they hypothesis pans out does that mean we should ask why abiogensis doesn't happen more frequently and why all abiogenically evolved organisms on Earth appear to have evolved from the same abiogenic starting point?

If there is a physical explanation that shows why molecules start to self replicate why isn't abiogensis more common?

Once we find life outside of the Earth if that life is also DNA/RNA based I do wonder if that means there is some physically reason why DNA/RNA seems to be the starting point for life? Wouldn't it be odd for every life form we discover to have the same encoding mechanism but different abiogenetic starting points?

[Larry of the Lawn]

I simply find it interesting that there may be reasonable phyisical explaination for abiogensis. Now if they hypothesis pans out does that mean we should ask why abiogensis doesn't happen more frequently and why all abiogenically evolved organisms on Earth appear to have evolved from the same abiogenic starting point?

If there is a physical explanation that shows why molecules start to self replicate why isn't abiogensis more common?

Once we find life outside of the Earth if that life is also DNA/RNA based I do wonder if that means there is some physically reason why DNA/RNA seems to be the starting point for life? Wouldn't it be odd for every life form we discover to have the same encoding mechanism but different abiogenetic starting points?

To the frequency questuon- no, it just predicts that abiogenesis will eventually happen. Suppose all life on earth earth comes from one incident, that could still be considered frequent or abundant in terms of the model, since the prediction is based on entropy over time.

[maarsen]

The math behind this has been known for decades. Chaos and Complexity theory show the same thing in that open systems do trend to higher entropy as long as there is a source of energy. Our weather is such a system.

[Zoë Sumra]

I simply find it interesting that there may be reasonable phyisical explaination for abiogensis. Now if they hypothesis pans out does that mean we should ask why abiogensis doesn't happen more frequently and why all abiogenically evolved organisms on Earth appear to have evolved from the same abiogenic starting point?

Guess: if it happened a second time, the organisms that had developed the first time would have eaten those that developed the second time.

[Solmyr]

If I am to buy into this theory, I must inevitable accept a bitter dilemma:

In order to evolve I need to allow light to shine upon my atoms for as long as possible. But ...

... that is also very likely to give me cancer and lead to premature death.

So, should I expose myself to rapid evolution and proceed to pass on my evolved genes through procreation just before the tentacles of cancer choke my body into dust, all for the benefit of the specie?

[TrueMetis]

I simply find it interesting that there may be reasonable phyisical explaination for abiogensis. Now if they hypothesis pans out does that mean we should ask why abiogensis doesn't happen more frequently and why all abiogenically evolved organisms on Earth appear to have evolved from the same abiogenic starting point?

If there is a physical explanation that shows why molecules start to self replicate why isn't abiogensis more common?

Once we find life outside of the Earth if that life is also DNA/RNA based I do wonder if that means there is some physically reason why DNA/RNA seems to be the starting point for life? Wouldn't it be odd for every life form we discover to have the same encoding mechanism but different abiogenetic starting points?

Well of course there's a reasonable explanation for aboigenesis. It happened. This is like being amazed that there's an reasonable explanation for gravity.

Guess: if it happened a second time, the organisms that had developed the first time would have eaten those that developed the second time.

And that's assuming complex chemicals where allowed to get that far before being absorbed by early life.

If I am to buy into this theory, I must inevitable accept a bitter dilemma:

In order to evolve I need to allow light to shine upon my atoms for as long as possible. But ...

... that is also very likely to give me cancer and lead to premature death.

So, should I expose myself to rapid evolution and proceed to pass on my evolved genes through procreation just before the tentacles of cancer choke my body into dust, all for the benefit of the specie?

No you don't, individuals do not evolve.

ETA: and even if individuals did evolve you can get energy in other ways. We assume life started on the earth's surface bombarded by cosmic rays but for all we know it started in a cave near a geothermal vent.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

And because gravity merely "exists" we shouldn't see Newton's achievement in describing Gravities effects mathmaticaly as impressive?

[TrueMetis]

TM,

And because gravity merely "exists" we shouldn't see Newton's achievement in describing Gravities effects mathmaticaly as impressive?

That's not what you said. "I simply find it interesting that there may be reasonable phyisical explaination for abiogensis." Suggests that you find that there is a reasonable explanation at all to be interesting. Like it's a surprise that there is one. If that's not what you meant fine, but the above certainly doesn't suggest you find the explanation interesting.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

:thumbsup:

[IheartIheartTesla]

I think it is an interesting idea, but again, the media ruins it with their gradiose claims - it is still highly speculative. My esteemed colleagues in academia dont fare any better, probably funding season is nigh.

Having said that, I took a quick look at the paper and it deals with bacterial cell division, and RNA self replicating. To me the former at least appears to have abiogenesis baked into it. The latter....I'm still not sure.

I know a little bit of the theory that goes into the equations (Crook's theorom which came out in 1998). I thought one of the assumptions for working with systems far from equilibrium was that they should be microscopically reversible (but not necessarily macroscopic), so I'm not even sure how valid this theory is for 'real' biological systems).

[Sci-2]

Not really different from "mere accident" if there is no intelligent design behind it.

Why do atoms react in this way? Because the physical laws of the Universe (by accident) force them to do so.

So the problem is just deferred.

I think you're conflating two problems - evolution and causation. I would agree that the "laws" of physics being externally coercive is flawed reasoning (see Talbott's essay on natural laws, along with Tallis' presentation on causation) [though I disagree a deity is required] but with respect to ID I defer to a conservative Catholic to show why ID doesn't prove God's existence:

Edward Feser: Signature in the cell?

In the combox of my recent post comparing the New Atheism and ID theory to different players in a game of Where’s Waldo?, a reader wrote:

One can run a reductio against the claim that we cannot detect design or infer transcendent intelligence through natural processes. Were we to find, imprinted in every human cell, the phrase "Made by Yahweh" there is only one thing we can reasonably conclude.

I like this example, because it is simple, clear, and illustrative of confusions of the sort that are rife in discussions of ID...

Well, it just isn’t the case that that is the “one thing we can reasonably conclude.” In fact, by itself such a weird event wouldn’t give us reason at all to affirm the existence of any “transcendent intelligence,” much less Yahweh. To see why not, compare the following parallel examples. Suppose we found, imprinted in every human cell, a phrase like “Made by Quetzalcoatl,” or “Simulated by the Matrix,” or “Made by Steve Jobs," or “Round squares exist,” or “Kilroy was here.” Would there be “only one thing we could reasonably conclude”? Well, sure there would, and it would be this: Something really weird is going on, but who the hell knows what.

Here's what a scenario of this sort would not be, though: a good reason to believe that Quetzalcoatl exists, or that we are part of the Matrix, or that Steve Jobs is our creator, or that round squares are possible after all, or that Kilroy had somehow found his way into each cell. (And who would “Kilroy” be anyway? Some WWII-era graffiti artist? The robot guy from the Styx album?)

Our background knowledge just doesn’t make any of these conclusions plausible.