The Origin of Life: An Unexplored Hypothesis

If you are a fish, your only reality is one with water as fundamental to your environ and its possibilities. Physicists and metaphysicists are unlike fish. They see their “reality” differently.

The Origin of Life: An Unexplored Hypothesis 

This essay was inspired by a podcast conversation (linked) between host Lex Fridman and Sara Walker. Sara is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist. She is the author of a new book titled “Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence”.

Sara and Lex both subscribe to the “physicalist” paradigm concerning their beliefs and understanding about Life, its nature and its origins. In their discussion, they pay little attention to what Sara refers to as the ideas of “vitalism”. To me, vitalism is part of the broader realm of metaphysics.  Metaphysics is what informs my understanding about Life.

I am the author of Creation, Reality & Mind.

This 5-episode essay series is available online at Substack.com under the MY LIFE LENS publication. The episodes are intentionally short in order to introduce a metaphysical hypothesis of Life in “bite size” chunks.  The links are posted below. 

Episode #1 

https://gbalfour.substack.com/p/creation-reality-and-mind-episode?r=16emgc

Episode #2

https://gbalfour.substack.com/p/creation-reality-and-mind-episode-b91?r=16emgc

Episode #3 

https://gbalfour.substack.com/p/creation-reality-and-mind-episode-dfa?r=16emgc

Episode #4

https://gbalfour.substack.com/p/creation-reality-and-mind-episode-979?r=16emgc

Episode #5 

https://open.substack.com/pub/gbalfour/p/creation-reality-and-mind-eposide?r=16emgc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Lex and Sara discussed a range of topics.

Including:

• “The hard problem of consciousness”: why it is so difficult to investigate scientifically and understand fundamentally? Lex and Sara acknowledge that the discovery of a “base reality” (ie. the most fundamental substrate for Life) has been very elusive as has been investigations into the nature of consciousness. I believe that this elusiveness is because their methods of investigations are too limited. Most credentialed scientists are physicalists who insist upon “chasing sub-atomic particles” as their search strategy instead of concurrently considering metaphysical investigations seriously.

• The “ever expanding” Universe is a acknowledged conundrum. Is there a relationship between this perceived phenomenon and the explosion of “combinatoric possibilities” that Sara describes? Is this conundrum also limited to the perceived reality and constrained methods of the physicalist investigators? 

• The sciences of Chemistry and Physics were discussed and provided the “containers” within which most of the ideas and ‘possibilities of understanding’ were presented. These are academic and institutionalizd disciplines which naturally steer all investigations according to their fundamental, long-established beliefs about how physical objects behave as matter existing within a space-time continuum and subject to forces such as gravity, energy, and the laws of thermodynamics (among others). If these disciplines set understood through a metaphysical lens, how would they be understood by an inquiring mind like Sara’s? 

• Beauty and the personal perception of it. Sara shared her delights in personal expression through fashion. She described her various creative ways to express her person as an intellectual past time, and greatly appreciates the near-infinite range of “gifts” provided by Cosmic Nature and Human Nature to do so. Of course, her mind is where all of these joys, creative thoughts, and appreciation take place as her personal experience of them. Her mind is where her personal metaphysical reality is experienced.

Words and their power to create, inform and deceive were discussed. Among the ideas considered: How are words used to shape and convey ideas and messages? And how are they perceived by the individuals who receive them?  

I listened to this discussion wishing at various times to introduce metaphysical ideas as a way to explore some of the questions that perplex them. The series Creation, Reality & Mind offers unexplored ideas and concepts that I would introduce to open up new possibilities for exploring the topic of Life from a strictly metaphysical lens. Some example follow.  

• Articons (described in the Substack series) are the metaphysical elements of creation and reality that exists beyond time, space and matter. They are analogous to atoms - the physical elements considered to be among the base components that comprise all matter occurring in space-time. How would the topic of Life be investigated and understood if time, space and matter were entirely eliminated from the discussion?

• Astronomy, Chemistry and Physics scientists explore the origins of the universe and all Life within it. They accept as a fundamental truth that everything exists as matter in space-time. Popular ideas like “the Big Bang theory” and the “God Particle” have emerged from their investigations based on this truth. What if the base assumptions of mass, time and space were set aside and the universe,  as perceived by sentient beings, arises from a Mind Singularity? What if Mind was the sole fountain of Life - a source that spawns an infinite expansion of articons on a combinatoric trajectory that all “beings of consciousness” perceived as “reality”?

• Compare the words ‘proximity’ and ‘consilence’ in the context of two very different paradigms of creation and reality: “physicalist” vs “vitalist”. The implications of this “mind experiment” are profound. They point to the importance of encouraging all scientists, philosophers and armchair “vitalists” to consider this “road less traveled” while investigating the Origins of Life. 

I hope that Sara and Lex read this post and consider these ideas. Like fish, a metaphysical lens on this subject will lead them into unfamiliar and uncomfortable waters. Let’s see if they will bite the hook I am dangling before them.