Epistolution’s Paradox
There is a major problem at the foundation of biological theory that few are taking seriously. Self-organization is not explained in our theory of evolution, but the theory cannot make sense without it. Every biologist on earth currently explains self-organization by referencing natural selection, but this is circular logic. Natural selection could not have begun until something self-organized. That’s the paradox.
In order for anything to begin to be naturally selected, it must be able to reproduce itself. This statement already implies that that there is a self; that there is a recognizable thing that reproduces. Something has to cling to its identity to reproduce itself.
Think about clods of mud in a farmer’s field. Do they reproduce? The presence of clods makes other clods more likely to form when the plow passes over them. So in this sense they cause reproduction. But there is nothing in the clod that resists its own destruction, so the clods dissolve after conditions change. The rain comes, and all the clods merge into each other, and the process begins again from no coherent starting points in the soil.
The critical factor to begin natural selection is not changing the surroundings into something like yourself, but in changing yourself to retain your identity despite a changing environment. Reproduction must follow after that. Unlike crystals, organisms reproduce from internal parts. They send parts of themselves into the world. Crystals merely catalyze nearby molecules into creating a similar pattern if conditions are right. If conditions change, the crystals lose their identities.
Our current genes-first theory of evolution explains life by saying that genetic material activates itself by means of loops. The DNA causes the creation of transcription factors and a whole lot of other gene regulatory machinery, and this machinery is what tells the DNA when to turn genes on and off. But when you investigate these loops, you find that they all depend on the presence of larger loops, and the larger loops depend on the presence of even larger loops. If this is an organized system, where is the outer boundary?
Take for instance the ApoE4 genes that I carry in my cells that have been linked to heart disease. These genes can be turned off or on in each of my trillion or so cells depending on whether I exercise or not. With more exercise, my likelihood of heart disease decreases even though I carry these genes, because the expression patterns are different. But this must mean that the loop that controls this gene expression pattern involves things like my running shoes, my job situation, and the temperature outside my apartment. Of course causally these shoes are linked to a factory in Malaysia, my job is linked to the global economy, and the weather is linked to itself all over the globe. All these things are linked to the day/night patterns which emanate from our position in the solar system, and this is linked to our sun’s position in the storms of wheeling stars that are circling one another in our galaxy. And so on.
The problem with this is that if each loop of gene expression was solely driven by the gene itself, then any rearrangement of any of the factors in the outer world would interrupt and disorganize the pattern of gene expression. Any change in the environment would make the intricate dances of transcription go haywire. But this does not happen. Instead, when external conditions change, the organism changes its internal patterns of function to accommodate the new situation.
For example, I have been able to become a bit healthier by preventing myself from late night snacking. I did this by removing the ice cream that I used to keep in my freezer. Now my cells produce insulin in response to high blood sugar much more sensitively than they once did. But this logically means that the cells in my body are partly controlled by the contents of my freezer. If my body had no way of internalizing this new condition, then I would have had no response to the difference in ice cream in the outer world. Many of us are familiar with the loop of craving and snacking that creates obesity. But rising rates of obesity worldwide cannot be driven by changes in the human genome, because our genes have not changed as a species.
This accommodation of the external world by rearranging things internally is called self-organization. This is the thing that organisms do that clods of mud and crystals cannot do. The fact that organisms stay organized proves without a doubt that this method of self-organization is not ad hoc or random but systematic. It proves that every cell is systematically responding to its environment according to a logical pattern that is not imprinted in the DNA. It proves that there is a separate causal method to life. DNA carries a set of informational templates, but the logic of how these templates are to be expressed is carried in the entire system of the organism, which is causally responsive to its position in the universe.
Natural selection is a powerful force. It has certainly extended life in amazing ways, far beyond its simple origins. It explains how life has changed over time. But epistolution explains how life can be alive. Everywhere natural selection has taken us, self-organization has been taken as well. If self-organization ever stopped being an integral feature of a living being, that being ceased to live.
This undiscovered, unlearned, unstudied logic is lying right in front of us, waiting to be observed in every cell on earth. But no one is currently observing it, because they have not realized this is something they should be looking for. No one is discovering epistolution because no one realizes that they need a new discovery to explain living behavior, or if they do they can’t imagine what that new discovery might be.
Once you recognize that all life must be using a downward logic to self-organize, it becomes easier to guess what the logic must be. Critical networks that are used are reinforced, and ones that are unused are degraded by atrophy. This has been observed since ancient times.
It is less obvious that the way the networks are precisely matched together with the environment requires that they be composed of triggers of some sort. Something has to trigger responses in these networks so that they can be either reinforced or degraded by built-in filters. This implies that the organism is not made up of circuits at all, as the genes-first theory has it, but rather something that works more like clocks.
The way to think of an organism is not as a set of complex circuits like computer hardware, that switch things on and off by direct binary codes, but as an interlocked set of clocks that are triggered by external conditions. Only time could be a sensitive enough trigger to set everything into organized harmony with itself in the beautifully woven web of a multicellular organism’s body. This metaphor also explains many other features of life, like sleep and dreaming and beauty, which I have covered in other essays.
The idea of organic networks as an interlocked set of clocks set to the timing cues of the external world finally resolves the paradox of self-organization. It means that we have no free will, because it means that we are literally driven by our surroundings. All we can do is live the way our circumstances force us to live, given the DNA that we carry, which we also do not choose.
If the environment is turning my genes on and off it means that the environment is controlling my whole body and everything it does…my actions and feelings and everything. Thoughts are just what riding on this wave of chemical reactions feels like internally. They are all driven by the external world and my place in it. So I’m not free to choose my actions even though I feel free. The world is reacting with itself through me just like two pressure systems react with each other through a tornado. The tornado isn’t free to decide where to be and what to do and neither am I. I go where I am sent.
The sensitivity of this clock-like mechanism means that every organism on earth is literally attempting to be in harmony not only with itself but with all other living creatures. Each living being absorbs causation from each other being, as we try to keep ourselves intact and functional. Our interactions are timed to one another like musical expressions in a grand improvisational orchestral suite. That’s how, for example, we can collaborate with trillions of bacteria in our gut that are essential to regulate our own moods and prevent depression.
The name we have for this attempted harmony is knowledge. Knowledge is what we absorb from our environment that tells us what the proper reactions are to remain self-organized, given the context we find ourselves in. Knowledge is at the same time both technological and moral, and it is a property of all life forms. The process of learning is literally what keeps our living bodies from disintegrating. Epistolution means that all organisms seek knowledge, and together with them we are building a more harmonious living system. We have no choice.
