
New physics needed to probe the origins of life - headalgorithm
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01318-z
======
mannykannot
To me, this passage epitomizes why I am not convinced by Kauffman's claim that
we need new physics:

"The question of whether there is a physics of life demands that we consider
that all examples of life might at their core be part of the same fundamental
phenomenon; otherwise, ‘life’ is not an objective property, but a collection
of special cases... but conventional approaches to life’s origins — such as
the ‘RNA world’ and other genetics-first models — cannot yet be formulated [as
something like a physical law]. That is because they make many assumptions on
the basis of properties that might be unique to the chemistry of life on
Earth, such as that RNA is necessary to life’s origins."

Kauffman starts from the position that he wants life to be a unified
ontological category, rather than a collection of special cases, but, for the
sake of argument, what if it isn't the former? That would not rule out
science[1] describing, analyzing and explaining it as the latter - it would
just mean that Kauffman's intuitions would be mistaken.

Stephen Jay Gould, wearing his historian-of-science hat, wrote several
articles about various examples of pre-, proto- and pseudo-scientific world
models, each of which tried to fit the diversity of life into a preconceived
grand scheme. Linnaeus et. al. took a radically different approach, in which
they abandoned (or, at least, de-emphasized) preconceived schemes, and,
working from the bottom up, based their taxonomy on a detailed examination of
the physiological similarities and differences between organisms. The unifying
theory for this taxonomy was found later, in the form of a theory of
evolution, and the taxonomy undoubtedly helped develop the theory.

So let's put aside dreams of a unified theory, and see if we can understand
just the origin of life on earth. If there is a grand theory, this would help
find it.

[1] I wrote 'science', not 'physics', because I don't think the reduction of
biology to physics is often useful. Take theories of evolution, for example:
they are not reductionist, and a reduction of the history of life on earth to
the underlying physics would not provide a better explanation.

------
acqq
Note: the title is not the conclusion or the content of the article. The
article attempts to be less dismissive to some of the direct claims of the
author of a book a comment on which the article is, and the title maybe
corresponds to the content of the book which is "provocative" (but it can be
the intervention of an editor too). And according to the article the book's
logic is something like "because we don't have starting conditions we can't
have formulas which would allow an exact derivation of how life evolves,
therefore it's beyond physics."

But that doesn't mean that the evolution didn't happen exactly following the
physical laws, only that you can't have "nice" formulas. But, realistically,
nobody should expect "nice formulas." Not everything that happens can be
reduced to a nice formula. The motion of two bodies due to the gravitation
they have can be reduced to a nice formula since Newton. But the motion of
three bodies?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
body_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem)

"Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of
initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required."

Is it "beyond physics"? No. It's just "there's no nice formula." And if it's
so hard only with three bodies, and considering the immense scale at which
molecular events happen (atoms and molecules having their own laws of
interaction which are simpler for two but again immensely more complex for
more), of course not too much simplicity to predict everything together should
be expected.

The article author also disagrees with the "beyond physics" formulation.

"New" physics in the language of the physicists means specifically "the new
particles which don't fit to our existing theory." And "the scale of the known
interactions is too big for nice formulas" doesn't lead to that. So the claims
of "new physics" in the article are simply "non sequitur." No new particles
are needed.

~~~
Gatsky
Physics is at the end of a day a human construct which quite obviously
reflects reality, but is not equivalent to that reality, and is useful to the
extent it helps us understand and predict natural phenomena.

Their choice of terminology could be better, but strictly is compatible with
the definition of physics.

~~~
mnl
Yes and no. Physics is done by humans, but at the end of the day this Higgs
from the convoluted construct is actually there, go figure.

Maybe physics is onto something, maybe aliens can't get here because
conservation of momentum is a universal law indeed, they're bounded by it like
every other speck of dust, and their alien construct about it has to look
pretty much like ours, the only difference being notations.

It's not so clear cut to me anymore we're making models that by definition can
never hit the jackpot. I guess we can't even be sure about that.

~~~
acqq
> Maybe physics is onto something

It is indisputable that the natural sciences objectively improve our overall
understanding of the world. Those who don't accept that much are simply giving
up rationality and claiming "miracles" where there are rational explanations.
Typically, there's some very specific agenda that such entities have.

------
mirimir
"Stuart Kauffman’s provocative take" sounds a lot like vitalism. Which is
where many go when they can't find simplistic explanations. Such as, for
example, Hans Driesch, when embryos didn't respond as expected to experimental
manipulation. But then Alan Turing came along.[0]

So anyway, "new physics" is arguably a cop out.

0)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/482464a.pdf?origin=ppub](https://www.nature.com/articles/482464a.pdf?origin=ppub)

~~~
DennisP
He's not talking about new fundamental physics, just self-organized complexity
that physics doesn't have the tools to predict.

~~~
mirimir
Sure, but that's what chemistry, biology and information science are for.
Calling it "new physics" is at best inaccurate.

------
pron
Kauffman is the originator of Boolean networks[1], a particularly interesting
computational view of biology.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network)

~~~
acqq
And he is also no physicist:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman)

------
inflatableDodo
Is an interesting counterpoint to idea being worked on by Jeremy England that
there is an underlying organising mechanism leading to life that is inherent
within thermodynamics - Statistical Physics of Adaptation by Nikolai Perunov,
Robert Marsland and Jeremy England -
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.1875](https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.1875)

------
trevyn
Jack Szostak does a pretty good job of outlining how life might have arisen.
It’s less mysterious than it intuitively might seem:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGOhXoprU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGOhXoprU)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ5jh33OiOA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ5jh33OiOA)

~~~
drb91
Are there transcripts anywhere outside youtube?

~~~
acqq
[http://exploringorigins.org/](http://exploringorigins.org/)

"This website is part of a multimedia exhibit at the Museum of Science that
includes live presentations on the Current Science & Technology stage and a
touch-screen kiosk."

(Museum of Science, Boston, 1 Science Park, Boston, MA 02114)

"Funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation."

------
Koshkin
Why do we need physics in the first place, to explain life? Shouldn't
chemistry be enough?

~~~
AtlasBarfed
I guess if you can get the necessary chemical effects from quantum stuff,
which I think crops up sometimes in biological processes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_biology)

Technically chemistry could encompass quantum-derived chemical effects, but I
believe the base insinuation of your post is that classical chemistry can
describe everything we see in biology, eventually.

As to the post, who knows? "New physics" is unlikely, I would agree.

But I'm way out of my league here.

