Elephantâ syndrome. The Buddha (but also deities in Islam, Jainism, Hinduism, and other cultures) recounts the story of several sightless men asked by a king to tell him what an elephant is like. Each examined different parts of the beast with their hands and concluded that a pachyderm was only the bit that they could feel. The tusk examiner suggested it was like a plowshare, the foot inspector a pillar, the tail man a brush, and so on. They fight; the king laughs. An elephant is all of those things, and you canât capture its majesty by singling out one of its characteristics.
When Justice Potter Stewart said âI know it when I see itâ (quoted at the top of this chapter), the âitâ he was referring to was pornography, in response to the prosecution of the 1958 film
The Lovers
to be banned as an obscenity. It has evolved into a phrase to describe the subjectively ill defined, or things without clear parameters. Life is just that. At one stage there was chemistry on Earth, and at a later stage there were living things. The route from the first to the second point is inevitably long, tortuous, and messy. The point where we definitely have living things is certainly where things become Darwinian, but not solely (as we shall soon see, there are even certain molecules that display the Darwinian property of self-replication with selection). In other words, the boundary between chemistry and biology is arbitrary. Life is a combination of lots of different chemical systems that are more than the sum of their parts. We separate science into categories in discussions such as this, and, indeed, when we learn it: biology, chemistry, geology, physics, et cetera. These are also somewhat arbitrary, as science is merely a way of knowing nature, and makes particularly blurry distinctions when considering the very inception of one of them: biology.
The Energetic Fly in the Soup
All of the actions of cells are ultimately mediated by the controlled flow of electrically charged atoms from one side of a membrane to the other. As you read, charge-bearing atoms flow into millions of single brain cells until they hit a threshold. When this happens, the brain cells fire up, and in consort with millions of others will form a thought process, or trigger a memory or understanding or induce the desire to make a cup of tea. Similarly, it is the controlled flow of protonsâhydrogen atoms charged by being stripped of their single electronâacross membranes that drives the generation of energy which the cell and organism entirely relies upon. In all complex life (including us), this happens in the cellâs power stations, mitochondria; in bacteria and archaea, across a membrane just inside the cellâs outermost casing. This type of chemical pathway is part of what we call metabolism, and is of central importance to all life as it generates energy. That energy powers all of the actions of biology, including the ones that facilitate the replication of information across generations, and everything else on the MRS. GRENâs life list.
For this reason, in considering the foundations of chemistry as it relates to biology, we have to turn to a more fundamental science: physics. The way chemicals behave is determined by the laws that belong traditionally to this field. Ernest Rutherford, 5 the discoverer of the particles that make up the atom, famously declared, âPhysics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting.â Though provocatively mischievous, there is some value in this reductionist view, one that is typically shared by physicists. Biological behavior is determined by chemical behavior, which is determined by atomic forces, and these are in the realm of physics.
Haldaneâs
What Is Life?
was published in 1949, but he was not the first to come up with this deceptively simple title. In 1944, Erwin Schrödinger wrote a physics-focused biological treatise with the same name, a
When Justice Potter Stewart said âI know it when I see itâ (quoted at the top of this chapter), the âitâ he was referring to was pornography, in response to the prosecution of the 1958 film
The Lovers
to be banned as an obscenity. It has evolved into a phrase to describe the subjectively ill defined, or things without clear parameters. Life is just that. At one stage there was chemistry on Earth, and at a later stage there were living things. The route from the first to the second point is inevitably long, tortuous, and messy. The point where we definitely have living things is certainly where things become Darwinian, but not solely (as we shall soon see, there are even certain molecules that display the Darwinian property of self-replication with selection). In other words, the boundary between chemistry and biology is arbitrary. Life is a combination of lots of different chemical systems that are more than the sum of their parts. We separate science into categories in discussions such as this, and, indeed, when we learn it: biology, chemistry, geology, physics, et cetera. These are also somewhat arbitrary, as science is merely a way of knowing nature, and makes particularly blurry distinctions when considering the very inception of one of them: biology.
The Energetic Fly in the Soup
All of the actions of cells are ultimately mediated by the controlled flow of electrically charged atoms from one side of a membrane to the other. As you read, charge-bearing atoms flow into millions of single brain cells until they hit a threshold. When this happens, the brain cells fire up, and in consort with millions of others will form a thought process, or trigger a memory or understanding or induce the desire to make a cup of tea. Similarly, it is the controlled flow of protonsâhydrogen atoms charged by being stripped of their single electronâacross membranes that drives the generation of energy which the cell and organism entirely relies upon. In all complex life (including us), this happens in the cellâs power stations, mitochondria; in bacteria and archaea, across a membrane just inside the cellâs outermost casing. This type of chemical pathway is part of what we call metabolism, and is of central importance to all life as it generates energy. That energy powers all of the actions of biology, including the ones that facilitate the replication of information across generations, and everything else on the MRS. GRENâs life list.
For this reason, in considering the foundations of chemistry as it relates to biology, we have to turn to a more fundamental science: physics. The way chemicals behave is determined by the laws that belong traditionally to this field. Ernest Rutherford, 5 the discoverer of the particles that make up the atom, famously declared, âPhysics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting.â Though provocatively mischievous, there is some value in this reductionist view, one that is typically shared by physicists. Biological behavior is determined by chemical behavior, which is determined by atomic forces, and these are in the realm of physics.
Haldaneâs
What Is Life?
was published in 1949, but he was not the first to come up with this deceptively simple title. In 1944, Erwin Schrödinger wrote a physics-focused biological treatise with the same name, a
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