Solutions Conjectured By Epistolution
2 min readMar 17, 2022
- What is the physiological logic by which an organism stays organized as it responds dynamically to its environment?
- If the epigenome controls the genome, what controls the epigenome? And what controls that? How does a cell know which genes to express at which time?
- What chemical process provides the basic motivation that is necessary for a network of molecules to pass on heritable knowledge?
- Why are circadian rhythms and other oscillations so ubiquitous among living cells?
- If life descends from bare replicators, why are there no bare replicators today, but only viruses that require cells to propagate?
- What provides the goal functions by which an organism can be creative in framing new problems?
- What makes problems interesting or boring?
- If replication is the only drive in biology, why are there so many opportunities for replication that are wasted?
- Why do organisms have lifespans? Why not be forever young?
- How is symbiogenesis possible?
- Why is the microbiome essential for cognition, metabolism, and immunity? How is it integrated with the rest of the human body?
- How does our microbiome maintain its integrity under changing conditions?
- Why should exercise increase health?
- Why do complex animals need sleep?
- Why does sleep involve dreaming, even in cephalopods?
- Why is consciousness a controlled hallucination?
- Why is the central nervous system in animals divided into a reductionistic part and an holistic part?
- Why does fasting decrease rather than increase the need for sleep?
- Why is placebo the most robust effect in medicine?
- Why is chronic disease so widespread and increasing despite our reductionist understanding of its etiology?
- Why do humans make music? Why is it more evocative and powerful than explicit information?
- Why do many animals appreciate beauty?
- Why would evolved creatures have a drive for morality?
- Why does morality change together with technology?
- What is the nature of intelligence? Where can it be found in the tree of life?
- What is the religious impulse in humankind?
- Why does love exist anywhere outside the context of reproduction?
- Why do post-reproductive animals live and fear death?
- How can memes evolve? What makes them possible?
- Why do humans, and other animals, appear to have free will and make decisions if free will violates the laws of physics?
