Abstract. Experimental
endeavors for the chemical origin of life can be facilitated better
and supplemented more by the similar endeavors for its physical
origin. The physical origin of life is unique in addressing the
physical process underlying the origin. What underlies the origin
is the process of communication between action and reaction. The
counterbalance between any pair of action and reaction as phrased
in the law of action and reaction can be accomplished either globally
in a synchronous manner or locally in an asynchronous manner.
Updating action and reaction locally in an asynchronous manner
embodies a real physical process of communication between the
two, while the global synchronization of action and reaction presumes
a hypothetical communication guaranteeing and observing an instantaneous
accomplishment of the counterbalance globally. The physical origin
of life can be a material phenomenon grounded upon the actual
communication process implementing the counterbalance of action
and reaction locally in an asynchronous manner.
1. Introduction
A considerable amount of experimental efforts has been focused upon the chemical origin of replicating molecules (cf., Miller and Orgel, 1974; Fox and Dose, 1977; Oro et. al., 1977; Ponnamperuma, 1978). In particular, if there can be available a template for replication in one form or another, the laboratory synthesis of replicating molecules could be conceivable (Bachmann et. al., 1992; Reggia et. al., 1993; Sievers and von Kiedrowski, 1994) . Nonetheless, such template-directing molecular replication, though impressive, does not face up to the real problem of the chemical origin. The origin of those directing templates has to squarely be dealt with in order to solve the problem (Böhler et. al., 1995). This observation however contributes to opening a perspective towards how the chemical origin of life could be envisaged in the light of template-directing molecular replication (Orgel, 1992).
Any template-directing molecular replication shares at least one common feature that information on how molecular replication would proceed is stored in and communicated from the participating templates (Zhang and Egli, 1995). Molecular replication proceeding on the available templates is just a material manifestation of how information functions in the process of communication. The chemical origin of life, when examined with regard to its conceptual foundation, turns out to touch upon the origin of de novo information to be communicated.
Of course, the information to
be communicated that is involved in any chemical reactions can
be specified by identifying both the initial reactants and the
final products. However, neither the initial reactants nor the
final products are the process itself carrying information to
be communicated. The chemical specification of information to
be communicated is a sort of interpolation conceived by a chemist
for connecting two sets of opposing end products. Unless the two
sets are available, the chemical specification is destined to
fail on its stringent methodology asking information to be separated
from the process of communication. As a matter of fact, the process
carrying information to be communicated is a communication. The
present reflexive nature of communication is methodologically
absent in the chemical specification of information that is taken
to be separated form the process of communication. Exactly for
this reason, our effort for approaching the origin of life should
also be supplemented by its physical studies, because it is physics
as a discipline which directly addresses the problem of process
in nature without having recourse to the notion of interpolation
(Matsuno, 1989). We shall first examine a physical nature of the
communication dynamics in detail.
2. Communication as the Basic Physical Process
Recognizing the significance of communication in physical systems has already had a rich history of its own. It was Rene Descartes who first emphasized the importance of communication rooted in laws of motion (Leydesdorff, 1995). In fact, Cartesian program initiated by Descartes came to recognize that laws of motion ought to be laws of communication of motion underlying compound collision of material bodies (Elzinga, 1972), although Descartes himself was much more involved in a metaphysical question of how does the mind communicate with the body (Leydesdorff, 1995).
Clearing the metaphysical connotation
hovering over Descartes' laws
of communication of motion was then attempted by Isaac Newton.
In particular, Newton's third
law stating (translated by Motte (1934)) "To
every action there is always opposed an equal reaction or, the
mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal,
and directed to contrary parts."
points to a physical nature of the communication taking place
in compound motion of colliding bodies. The physical characteristic
of the communication is explicitly phrased in his reasoning of
the third law in Principia translated by Motte:
"Whatever draws or presses another is as much as drawn or pressed by that other. If you
press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. If a horse draws a
stone tied to a rope, the horse (if I may so say) will be equally drawn back towards the
stone; for the distended rope, by the same endeavor to relax or unbend itself, will draw
the horse as much towards the stone as it does the stone towards the horse, and will
obstruct the progress of the one
as much as it advances that of the other."
Establishment of the third law presumes an actual implementation of the communication by means of, say, the rope connecting a horse and a stone. The rope serves a medium through which the action and reaction are communicated for the sake of establishing the counterbalance between the two.
What is really significant in this establishment is that the communication between action and reaction remains legitimate whatever may be responsible for generating the pair of action and reaction. Even if an action is generated by assuming a biological organism such as a horse, the third law is not taken to be a derivative of biology in whatever sense. It is even not a derivative of mechanics. Quite the contrary, mechanics understood as classical and quantum mechanics is a derivative of the third law, although both material bodies and fields are incorporated in figuring out how action and reaction could be conceived in the latter.
The third law states that the communication between action and reaction is quite physical, instead of remaining merely metaphysical. But, it stops short of identifying what the real physical nature of the communication is. A breakthrough for this matter came from Newton's another notion, that is, gravitation. If action-at-a-distance originating in gravitation is taken as a means of the communication between any pair of action and reaction, the counterbalance of action and reaction implied by the third law can be accomplished instantaneously globally in a synchronized manner. Although Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz perceived Newton's gravitational attraction does not work by mechanical means (Leibniz, 1698; 1966) and Christiaan Huygens expressed his dissatisfaction with the notion of action-at-a-distance (Huygens, 1690; 1888-1950), the idea of the globally synchronized updating of action and reaction has been proved to be so convincing and invincible since then at least on a conceptual basis.
The power of the convincing persuasion rests upon the availability of time that is globally synchronized, that is, Newtonian time. If the communication between action and reaction takes time, it would interfere with the notion of another time conceived exclusively within the framework of mechanics on movable bodies. One conceptual device for eliminating conflicts between time in the communication and another time in mechanics on movable bodies would be to dismiss either one of the two completely. In fact, the notion of an attractive gravitation as an action-at-a-distance provides a solid recipe for dismissing time involved in the communication between action and reaction. Monopoly of Newtonian time is thus conceivable only as a consequence of the global synchronization of the communication between any pair of action and reaction. The communication between action and reaction implied by the third law by itself remains indecisive with regard to whether time could be globally synchronized. Global synchronization of time may be available only if there can be a conceptual scheme such as an action-at-a-distance being capable of dispensing with the actual communication in time domain.
Global synchronization of time, though no more than a theoretical artifact at best, has been extremely influential in the clarity of the notion of time. Even in relativity, the idea of global synchronization remains intact though the time there is relativized instead of being absolute in classical mechanics. Global synchronization of relativized times can in fact accomplished by means of the symmetry operation preserving the Lorentz invariance for special relativity or that preserving the covariance for general relativity.
Nonetheless, the matter of the communication between action and reaction has not been settled yet. If the interaction between material particles and their field is the case, the reaction to a particle from the field as a real physical process can sometimes induce a catastrophic effect unless tamed down otherwise. A most pronounced example of this sort is found in the ultra-violet divergence both in electron's mass and electric charge in quantum electrodynamics (QED). The problem originates in the theoretical perspective that the communication between an electron's action towards the radiation field and the reaction from the latter field towards the electron should be taken as a perturbation on the two parties which were initially thought interaction-free.
QED is unique in holding the global synchronization of time by means of the symmetry operation preserving the Lorentz invariance. At issue has been how to accommodate the communication between action and reaction with the presumed global synchronization of time. The solution for this problem has been that the net contribution from the reaction from the radiation field could make both the values of electron's mass and electric charge finite exactly as measured experimentally if both the values would be taken to be infinite in the absence of the communication. QED certainly provides a successful case of reducing the contribution from the communication between action and reaction to renormalizing the form of the underlying mechanics and no more. However, the possibility of reducing the effect of the communication between action and reaction merely to a renormalization of the form of mechanics is extremely scanty, not to mention quantum gravity (Penrose, 1989).
The problem confronting us is
again an old one. That is about how to accommodate the communication
between action and reaction with the dynamics of moving bodies
and fields. The communication between an arbitrary pair of action
and reaction, unless aided by a hypothetical artifact of global
synchronization, can be updated only locally asynchronously. This
would raise a formidable problem of how to conceive the global
synchronization of time, if ever possible, from the locally asynchronous
updating of action and reaction.
3. Global Synchronization in the Record
In spite of the seriousness residing in the locality and asynchronism latent in the communication between action and reaction, the significance of the global synchronization of time established in Newtonian mechanics and also in its conceptual cousins seems almost invincible. The overwhelming influence exerted from the global synchronization of time is witnessed in the observation that mechanistic causation synchronizing and equating cause with effect is indispensable there. Synchronization of cause with effect is a mere derivative from the synchronization of action and reaction that would result in dispensing with the actual communication between the two.
Even more, insofar as the global record of actions and reactions has become available by whatever means, it would be imperative as a matter of principle for any finished reaction to be able to find the counterpart of the finished reaction (Saunders, 1993). For any reaction retrieved and identified in the record has already finished the communication with the corresponding action to be counterbalanced. The counterbalance of action and reaction observed in the record can certainly provide an opportunity for a form of mechanics to legitimately be applicable irrespectively of the manner in which the global record could actually have been generated.
By definition, any finished reaction in the record synchronizes with its counterpart of the finished action also found in the record. Mechanistic causation equating cause with effect does legitimately work in the record even if the dynamics being responsible for generating the record has nothing to do with mechanics. The present universality of mechanics and mechanistic causation in the record may overshadow the actual significance of a non-mechanistic dynamics underlying the communication of action and reaction to be updated locally in an asynchronous manner. However, this is only a matter of superficiality because the global synchronization of action and reaction retrieved from the record can be identifiable only in the eyes of the record keeper, but not in those of the participants in the actual dynamics of communication.
The record of finished actions and reactions can in fact provide more than what mechanistic retracing of the counterbalanced pairs of action and reaction could give. Although any finished reaction can find its counterpart of the finished action, the reverse does not hold. The actions made in the most recent past are anticipating those reactions that are still in the process of their own making. The action yet to be counterbalanced by the reaction in the making exhibits simply that the action is currently involved in the process of generating and communicating with the prospective reaction. The communication between an action already made and its reaction in the making is not mechanistic because of the absence of a means for guaranteeing the global synchronization between the two. Contingencies are inevitable to any communication of local and asynchronous nature because no party involved in the communication can identify what will be communicated before the event. Such notion of contingency is totally absent in mechanistic causation synchronizing any cause with its effect.
The contingency associated with making a reaction implies that the reaction is underdetermined by the preceding action and could have been made otherwise. What is more, the communication of the contingent reaction towards the party having exerted the action in the first place is also contingent to the latter. Since any reaction to be communicated is generated locally in the absence of a unique global coordination with all the others, the contingency involved in the communication is self-referential and thus self-perpetuating. This makes a contingent reaction, when communicated to elsewhere, turn into a new action anticipating further reaction because the contingency communicated comes to act upon there. However, the contingency cannot be arbitrary. It is constantly under the constraint that once both actions and reactions are frozen in the record, mechanistic causation guaranteeing a unique one-to-one correspondence between an arbitrary frozen pair of action and reaction could be observed. The law of motion of a one-to-one temporal mapping is to survive in the frozen record of finished actions and reactions. In contrast, the communication between a finished action and a corresponding reaction in the making follows the law of motion of a one-to-many temporal mapping due to the observation that the reaction to be made could have been otherwise because of the involvement of contingencies (Matsuno, 1985, 1989). At the same time, the record of the development that followed the one-to-many law is required to be reproducible as the one developed as following the one-to-one law because of the absence of contingencies in the record.
Recognizing the communication
between action and reaction to be updated locally in an asynchronous
manner comes to emphasize that the communication dynamics of local
character reduces to a mechanics of global character in the record
(Gunji, 1995). Responsible for the transition from the communication
in the making to the mechanics in the products is the contingent
activity for the law of action and reaction. The relationship
between the communication dynamics and the mechanics is legitimately
supplementary with each other, and by no means antagonistic. There
is nothing to lose from mechanics even if the communication dynamics
is duly admitted. Unless one would let mechanics take over the
communication dynamics or let the communication dynamics dispense
with mechanics, both survive without generating persistent conflicts
between the two. What we would like to see at this point is a
factual evidence indicating that the communication dynamics of
local character could really be operative.
4. Communication Dynamics at Work
What is already implicit in Newton's third law on the communication between action and reaction is that both, or force in short, serve as a means of the communication. Although the first and second laws specify how force should be defined, none of the three laws are specific enough to decipher what is all about force in an exhaustive manner including even its generative aspect. Rather, the third law remains persistently legitimate under any circumstances in which force defined by the first and second laws is operative. The implied self-sufficiency of the third law now makes a means of the communication between action and reaction internally prepared. That is force itself, otherwise the third law would have to stop short of being self-contained.
The self-sufficiency of the notion of force now makes the communication between action and reaction by means of force a dynamic process that is not covered by, but by no means contradicts the process conditioned on the first and second laws. Although the first and second laws address themselves to the situation that force acts upon a movable body, they remain silent about the case that force may act upon a force. As a matter of fact, it is the third law which can implicitly address such a situation of force acting upon a force, since the communication between action and reaction by means of force is nothing other than an instance of force acting upon a force. Of course, one can legitimately dismiss the case of force acting upon a force and save only the case of force acting upon a movable body if the communication between action and reaction for the sake of their counterbalance is deemed to take place globally in a synchronous manner. However, the likelihood of the global synchronization of action and reaction comes to beg further question of how could it become possible at all.
Figuratively speaking, Newton had already been prepared to the reflexive nature of force when he formulated the three laws. When he reasoned the legitimacy of the third law by quoting a familiar case of a horse drawing a stone, the horse is taken to be a generator of force. The horse generates and adjusts the force as responding to the reaction being communicated from the stone. Although the stone as a movable body as responding to the force exerted upon does not carry the reflexive capacity of force, the horse can certainly act upon a force in the form of reaction from the stone. Still, the third law holds. This observation can further be generalized so as to include those cases in which all the forces are reflexive in the respect of acting upon themselves. Consider, for instance, that two horses tied to a rope are involved in a tug of war. Even if the stone drawn by a horse is replaced by another horse, Newton's original reasoning for the law of action and reaction remains completely legitimate. What is really significant to Newton's third law is that it is well prepared to those forces that are self-reflexive, though they would simply disappear once the global synchronization of action and reaction as conditioned on an action-at-a-distance is taken.
In order to see whether the communication between action and reaction grounded upon the reflexivity of forces involved could really proceed, it may be more convenient to consider a case of a fully developed biological movement as caricatured in the tug of war between two competing horses. The reflexive nature of forces of course cannot be arbitrary. The reflexivity cannot survive in the record of those finished actions paired with their counterpart of finished reactions because of the global synchronization there. The reflexivity of forces survives only in the on-going actions that are still in the process of forming the reactions to be counterbalanced. The present requirement that the reflexivity of forces is not allowed to leave any of its remnants behind in the record, however, raises a severe methodological difficulty in identifying the reflexivity directly in an externally measurable manner, because what can be measured is in the record. Identification of the reflexivity of forces or the actual communication between action and reaction for this matter, if ever possible, could be indirect at most.
One likelihood for identifying the reflexivity of forces indirectly may come from the observation that the communication between action and reaction proceeding locally in an asynchronous manner carries with itself a certain extent of contingencies all the time because of the absence of a means for coordinating concurrent actions and reactions globally. This would come to mean that there could be a certain arbitrariness in the reflexive component of forces even if the dynamics is retraced so as to reproduced the same result. For the reflexive components, by definition, cannot be left behind in the record. Furthermore, although it is not left behind in the record, the reflexive force can successively induce both reflexive and non-reflexive forces, the latter of which is certainly left behind in the record as the movement of a movable body. When one tries to faithfully retrace the recorded movement of movable bodies while admitting and controlling the arbitrariness in the reflexive component of forces, it may be feasible to find out the general property of the reflexive forces if faithful retracings are really obtainable.
Since reflexive forces are constantly kept out of the record, they can be no more than mere theoretical devices in the simulated retracings. On the other hand, however, the real dynamic situation to be registered in the record as in the actual occasion of the tug of war between competing horses makes every reflexive force actual. That means that the extent of being contingent with those reflexive forces has to remain within the limit that the force generator can manage. Reflexive forces appearing in the actual dynamics are real, but are kept out of the record. In contrast, reflexive forces appeared in the simulated retracings are hypothetical, and can be only indirectly kept in the record of the simulator controlling the arbitrariness of those forces. Only the effect of the reflexive forces embodied in the form of the effected non-reflexive forces is retrievable from the record of the simulator. Consequently, one can examine whether those effected non-reflexive forces that can faithfully reproduce the recorded movement could remain within the limit the participating force generators can manage, especially whether they could avoid their explosions.
One of the factors controlling the arbitrariness in the reflexive component of forces is their propagation velocity. This velocity is nothing other than the velocity at which action and reaction are communicated and adjusted in a communicative manner, because it is the reflexive forces effecting both reflexive and non-reflexive forces that are responsible for communicating between and adjusting forces for the sake of the law of action and reaction. Identification of the propagating reflexive forces can only indirectly be accomplished by referring to the effected non-reflexive forces that are propagating.
We have examined how the recorded bending movement of a sea urchin flagellum could faithfully be retraced by adjusting the propagation velocity of reflexive forces acting there as a control parameter (Matsuno, 1989). A faithful retracing of the recorded bending movement of a sea urchin flagellum was certainly obtained, confirming that the non-reflexive forces effected by the reflexive ones are propagated along the flagellar axoneme at a finite velocity, about 730 mm/s (Matsuno, 1989; Imai et. al., 1992).
Another example we have examined was on an actin-myosin complex as a fundamental functional unit of muscle contraction that is ubiquitous in biology. In particular, we focused on a bending movement of an actin filament sliding on the glass plate coated with myosin molecules either in the presence of ATP molecuels as energy supplier or in its absence. When it was attempted to faithfully retrace the recorded bending movement of an actin filament in the presence of ATP by adjusting the velocity at which contingent reflexive forces are supposed to propagate along the filament, we came up with its faithful retracing at the propagation velocity of about 5 mm/s (Matsuno, 1989). On the other hand, the propagation velocity in the absence of ATP was found to diverge for those actin filaments that fluctuated simply as responding to thermal agitations coming from their surroundings. The divergence of the propagation velocity conforms to the observation that reflexive forces would not be operative in the mechanical Brownian motion of a flexible string. Rather, when forces are exclusively non-reflexive as limiting their actions only to those acting towards movable bodies, there would be no room for reflexive forces to survive. The absence of reflexive forces is certainly legitimate in mechanics based upon the global synchronization of action and reaction. The thermal Brownian motion as a derivative from mechanics and its statistics is no exception in dispensing with those reflexive forces. Conversely, the movements of a sea urchin flagellum and an actin-myosin complex in the presence of ATP undoubtedly demonstrate that the communication between action and reaction is physically operative in the form of propagating reflexive forces. At the least, these examples of contemporary biology witness a legitimacy of the dynamics of communication between action and reaction proceeding locally in an asynchronous manner.
When dynamics is classified into
two of mechanics and the communication dynamics, it is the latter
that signifies the dynamics potentially giving birth to biology.
The communication dynamics is already latent in Newton's
original conception of the three laws, especially in the third
law on action and reaction. Likewise, contemporary biology witnesses
an operation of the communication dynamics on the observational
basis. We have at length come to the point that may enable us
to duly address the physical origin of life from the perspective
of the communication dynamics.
5. Communication Dynamics Underlying the Origin of Life
Information to be communicated especially in the context of the origin of life assumes that information is generative. The generative characteristic of information rests upon its locality both in space and time. No global synchronization applies to information, because the globality of an invariant character would dismiss generative information altogether. When the absence of global synchronization is duly attended, information is seen to develop through the transaction among the material participants communicating with each other. Information associated with the origin of life is no exception in observing the communication between action and reaction to be updated locally in an asynchronous manner. Any globality of imposed character is foreign to the communication dynamics, because in the latter every participant in the dynamics comes to be detected by others solely through the very dynamics internally. The environment is also an object to be detected, experienced and even acted upon internally within the framework of the communication dynamics. The present internalization of the environment latent in the dynamics now provides any experimental effort for the origin of life a specific implication. The reflexivity of forces has to be maintained in any experimental endeavor for the origin of life, otherwise the communication dynamics would be pushed out.
When the component molecules for molecular replication are available in the laboratory setting, the likelihood for the actual replication would require an indefinite sustenance of reflexive forces upholding the communication dynamics. For generative information operating in any material process of action and reaction resides nowhere other than in the on-going communication between the two to be updated locally in an asynchronous manner. The reflexivity of forces could survive only when the environment surrounding the component molecules can be acted upon and when the force acting upon the environment could alter the force exerted from the very environment accordingly.
This reciprocity of reflexive forces, however, comes to interfere with the standard methodology of asking experimental controllability which states that any experiment to be counted on has to specify its boundary conditions. Reflexive forces operating in the communication dynamics are thus accompanied by a genuine methodological difficulty in identifying themselves on the experimental basis externally. The laboratory effort for the onset of molecular replication derivable from the smaller component molecules alone is sandwiched between two methodological difficulties. One is approval of reflexive forces that cannot directly be registered in the record, and the other is dismissal of complete controllability over the intended experiments. The seriousness of the two difficulties cannot be overemphasized. What could be possible instead would be only to look for a practical loophole for easing off the stated difficulties, if ever possible.
At issue would be how to maintain the reflexivity of forces acting and reacting between those component molecules and their environment. One possibility for coping with the present methodological impasse would be to let the experimental environment to vary arbitrarily to the extent that the laboratory experiment could permit and to see whether there could be any resonating phenomena between the synthetic chemical reactions taking place there and a choice of varying environmental conditions. A rationale of this strategy is in the observation that the reflexivity of forces originating in the environment could artificially be simulated by varying the environmental conditions arbitrarily. Steady environmental conditions, on the other hand, whatever they may be, cannot uphold the reflexivity of forces because of their steadiness immune to being influenced by others. If one can engineer such a varying environmental condition that could resonate with an enhancement of synthetic chemical reactions therein, the reflexivity of forces operating between the component molecules and their environment would survive to the extent that the resonance between the components and the environment is kept. A possible onset of molecular replication would only be a consequence of the sustaining reflexivity of forces acting and reacting there.
To prepare the proposed resonating conditions between the component molecules and their environment may be an extremely rare event in the laboratory. On the other hand, however, the evolutionary onset of replicating molecules on the primitive earth manifests that occurrence of the resonance between the components molecules and their environment could have been the case. One of the factors varying the environmental conditions at that time was the diurnal cycle. Only those molecular organizations that could resonate with the varying environmental conditions available at that time could have survived. Moreover, unless it is forcibly eliminated by imposing or conceiving steady environmental conditions, the reflexivity of forces can exhibit the capacity of acting towards the environment and varying it, no matter how limited the extent may be. In fact, the capacity of acting towards the outside with the consequence of maintaining the very capacity demonstrates itself, for instance, in heterotrophic activity of pulling material resources onto the inside (Matsuno,. 1995). This observation comes to suggest that the resonance between the component molecules and their environment would already be latent with the capacity for embodying heterotrophic activity. Once the resonance got started, the positive feedback characteristic could have enhanced the resonating conditions further unless the environment would forcibly apply adverse conditions.
The laboratory effort for the
origin of life has been met with attempt for either making replicating
molecules or preparing metabolic activities, among others. Nonetheless,
if this effort is attempted under the prevailing framework of
experimental controllability, the likelihood for keeping the reflexivity
of forces intact would face extremely adverse odds. What we may
require for our further endeavor for the laboratory onset of replicating
molecules possibly supplemented with their metabolisms might be
a shift in the methodological perspective. That may be to let
experimental conditions be less controllable so as to leave both
the component molecules and their environment enough room for
facilitating mutual enhancements.
References