xssve
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Well, my thinking on this subject is difficult to test, and even somewhat mysto, since it requires one to construct an abstract object, "Life" - which is both noun and verb, and further, anthropomorphizing it to a degree if only to keep the sheer volume of language needed to describe it at a minimum.
So first, what is "Life"?
The scientific answer is something like: "a structure of amino acid chains that possesses the ability to convert energy (metabolism) and is capable of replication".
I'm not a trained scientist so if you wish to correct this, by all means feel free.
In fact, I even argue with the replication part, I don't think reproduction is required to define "Life" - more of an AI issue, but I believe that in a hierarchy of behaviors, reproduction is a child object of the metabolic parent - i.e., its entirely probably that many forms of metabolizing amino acid structures formed and "died" before one came along that replicated - we would simply have no record of this.
This would mean that replication is an adaptation, necessary to describe evolution - i.e., a non replicating organism (and I'm assuming organic because there is no current definition of inorganic life) - I'm theorizing that a non-replicating organism can evolve, but that it's essentially a dead end in terms of evolution in general.
But, it's an adaptation shared by all organic life we know of, if there are non-replicating organisms they don't live long enough for us to find them, but I don't think it's precluded by a non-teleological empirical understanding of random mutation.
My hypothesis here is that a metabolizing organism is capable of growth, physical growth, and growth is limited to a degree by atmospheric pressure: i.e., a given organism can only grow to the size that it's physical structure can withstand atmospheric pressure which for simple organisms is not very large and the hypothesis is that asexual reproduction began as a means of shedding mass through agamogenesis.
Defined as a secondary adaptation however, it still comes in a pretty damn close second to metabolic function itself, and once you have it, you have the linear mechanism of further evolution, and it's shared by all known forms of organic life to the extent that it's typically included in the definition of "Life" itself - the very existence of non-reproducing life is largely an academic exercise at this point, as I say, possibly cogent to AI theory, and possibly to laboratory created life when that ever happens - and when it does, perhaps my theory can be tested.
Meantime, reproduction is basically assumed as a given in what we might call successful organisms, in evolutionary terms, an organisms success is pretty much defined by it's reproductive success, and "Life", by which we now mean "reproducing life", now exhibits behaviors other than metabolic function, and in reproducing, spawns more complex behaviors as a result of population growth, i.e., there are now what you might call social stressors, as a single organism now becomes a population of organisms, and one of these behaviors is further adaptation.
i.e., once you have reproduction, presumably the organism reproduces to it's logical limit, which, having overcome size limits, now involve other externalities, the availability of whatever form of energy is being metabolized, etc., and the behavior here should be for the population to expand to fill the inhabited niche to the saturation point, at which some of the population will either adapt to a new niche, and begin expanding to fill that - a zone maybe one degree cooler in a sulfur vent for example - or the population will deplete the available energy source of the niche and a die off will occur - perhaps total, perhaps not, depending.
In any case, we now have Two rather insistent trends, or behaviors, for lack of better terminology: reproduction itself, and competition for energy as a result of population growth, both of which are resolved by further mutation and adaptation, which eventually results in sexual reproduction which accelerates the rate of mutation and adaptation, as various classes of organisms saturate concentric niches.
So, the answer to your question is basically, "that's life buddy". It's written into your DNA, into every cell of your body, in what in programming language we would call a very low level.
< Message edited by xssve -- 2/27/2013 10:33:23 AM >
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