In 2010, James Shapiro gave a talk on evolution at FERMILAB, the particle physics lab near Chicago. An astonishing 800 people showed up on a frigid January night. The audience was enthusiastic.
Clearly evolution was not just a topic for propeller-heads. At some level everybody wants to know: “Where did it all come from?”
I had been following Shapiro’s work for 4 years but had never seen him in person. After a lively Q&A, the hangers-on moved to the cafeteria and he started answering questions.
Suddenly one guy “got” what Dr. Shapiro had been saying all night long.
“You mean the mutations aren’t random???” he asked.
“No sir,” replied Dr. Shapiro, “they’re not random at all. When bacteria are comfortable, some mutations cannot be found in over ten billion cells. But when they’re starving, the mutation frequency can go up by a factor of >100,000-fold. They develop new adaptations so they can survive.”
I watched the face of the man questioning Dr. Shapiro. You could almost hear the gears grinding inside his head! The guy looked to be in his fifties; I imagine he’d bought into the random mutation myth decades ago and had never questioned it since.
I noticed his wife standing nearby. I couldn’t help but notice that he was greatly supported by her presence. Speaking to 800 people didn’t appear to be his usual activity, and every few minutes he would pull out a handkerchief and wipe beads of sweat from his forehead.
A year later his book “Evolution: A View from the 21st Century” came out. We became friends and organized the Cancer & Evolution Symposium with some of the best scientists in the world.
Shapiro’s book has been updated and today is THE reference book on evolution. At $29.95 print / $9.95 kindle it’s a flat-out bargain.
In my view, the most important and deepest section is “All Living Cells are Cognitive” (page 541).
“Cognition” is a technical term that encompasses cellular intelligence. This piece makes an unassailable case that all life forms are a lot smarter than most people think they are.
Cognition is THE central question in biology, and like the related concept of consciousness, it is unsolved. But what is unmistakably clear is that it is there and the mystery is staring us in the face.
Pick up your copy:
“Evolution: A View from the 21st Century – Fortified”
Print $29.95 / Kindle $9.95
Download The First 3 Chapters of Evolution 2.0 For Free, Here – https://evo2.org/evolution/
Where Did Life And The Genetic Code Come From? Can The Answer Build Superior AI? The #1 Mystery In Science Now Has A $10 Million Prize. Learn More About It, Here – https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0
Cognition, like consciousness, is readily comprehended and thoroughly so. It does take a fertile premise from which to so cognate, though. As it happens, the premise and its corollary are readily available. This premise can be described as First Cause, with its corollary of Phalanx.
First Cause is the source, the breakthrough, from which Phalanx takes incidence. No First Cause, no Phalanx. Further, without First Cause there is no possible discovery ever at all of the principles resulting in our biology. So we are also in this saying, that consciousness is central exactly to biology’s beginning and continuance. In particular, we are saying in practice that biology at exactly every level engineers its own development.
But getting back to First Cause, it’s a pretty simple premise. Ten words, three terms. A less terse version of it, thirty words in three terms.
First Cause: 1) Primary avails circumstance. 2) Circumstance indigenously reiterates primary. 3) Primary realizes circumstance.
First Cause (thirty word version): 1) A primary tends to avail a circumstance. 2) The circumstance tends to indigenously reiterate the primary. 3) The primary in realizing the ones of the reiteration tends to power all being unquenchably.
Now this, First Cause, is the defining course of all development. Every development, of exactly every case, follows along the First Cause schematic outlined above. What is called development that follows not First Cause, is actually doing so but not yet evidently doing so. Thus, we are saying that exactly all development is exactly intelligent to an unimaginably fantastic level.
Here, in this treatise, we have no time nor opportunity to discuss the means by which First Cause goes forth other than to set forth its terms, which we have done above. But we will discuss the consequences of those terms, as they are practiced.
In term three, the primary realizes – makes real within, takes to within – the ones of the circumstance, the ones of the reiteration. In this, the virtue (resource) of those ones is intrinsically incorporated into the primary, which primary then is a continuing source of their resource quite apart from them. We see this practiced most dramatically as DNA in the biological cells.
With the primary now endowed with the resource of the circumstance, the powering of all ones proceeds forth from the primary. Thus, all ones are increased into gaining just such resource simply because the primary did so in the first place. Of course, they all (being ones) have been this to one another from before any time began to be measured to them, but in this example we see so, clearly, and so can declare it to be.
With a body of such powered increase, every involved member is carrying forth resource from the other members past and present. This is a chain reaction just like a nuclear fire, one member lighting the next members on “fire” with power that is life. The increase never begins to ever begin to fail, though things like getting killed seem to hesitate it. But again, as we see so clearly in the Christ, getting killed just increases the fire of life.
This fire of life, this chain reaction that knows no death nor ever can die, we call Phalanx. This, Phalanx, is the scientifically demonstrable resource that has till now escaped both scientific and philosophic discovery. It is far more vast than any treasure our civilization ever has uncovered, and it is actually at hand. Though as of now, only in description and practice but not in experimental consequence. Think of it, what are the chances that the one person who could put this reasoning together, would also be a practicing laboratory guru with a big budget and white coated assistants? Nope, not gonna happen.
So the $10M origins of life prize goes unclaimed, and will continue to go unclaimed, until First Cause and its Phalanx is spoken forth in some form or the other. The Holy Bible is all written in First Cause, but with our discussion First Cause is brought into measured comprehension.
Okay, so that’s all I have now to say. Maybe some one will be interested in catching on, though.
Ken,
Thanks for your contribution. On your horizon do you see any means of confirming this model experimentally?
Hello, Perry;
Just off the top of my head, since the brain is entirely organized (as I see it) within First Cause, as indeed a Phalanx, it should be profitable to look into synaptic development.
Just generally, a neuron forms synapses or disestablishes synapses based on usage. So to set up a petri dish with neurons that are stimulated a certain way, in a certain relationship, would likely produce a highly visible trail of resulting formed or depleted axonal synapses.
This suggestion is simply because the axon-and-synapse layout would be highly visible under ordinary microscopes, and the knowledge body of such study is extreme. So the perturbations of this experiment should become distinct, perhaps angling toward conclusions.
But the real thing is, that our First Cause and its Phalanx, is above all above all experiential. Our every any, is in and of this premise set. So I merely make a wild guess at one possible experimental approach.
Again, thanks for asking such a deep question as, what produces cognizance or consciousness.
If we say that whoever does not reach your development and knowledge, he will not be able to benefit you, therefore human knowledge is limited and therefore human abilities remain unable to control the genetic code and breathe life. Of course, the universe and everything around us is conscious, and its consciousness has been prepared in advance to keep pace with the development of life and realize the impact of evolution to become aware by humans. It is possible to create artificial intelligence with high capabilities, but not supernatural.