OUR FIRST AGE: Scene 4

COMPLEXITY, DEATH AND BEYOND

‘Everything taking form in nature incurs a debt,
that must be paid by dissolving again
so that other things may form.’
Anaximander

Around 1 billion years ago, when Earth’s day had apparently stretched to about 20 hours long, another major step in evolution occurred. Some eukaryotes, perhaps in response to some kind of critical climate change, started a kind of merger that would dramatically expand the application of synergy. Remember at this stage virtually all organisms were still in the water, soft-bodied and slowly drifting.

Now after cloning some remained together instead of splitting apart, and eventually a new being emerged made up of a community of cells, each one’s interests intertwined in the whole. At first the cells built up in a branching, fractal pattern, interacting through simple feedback loops. But over time they organized themselves into layers, which then differentiated into masses of specialized cells (tissues) and body-parts with specialized vital functions (organs).

The synergy created by tissues and organs working collectively increased the new organisms’ adaptability, but they didn’t yet diverge into separate plants and animals - today’s slime-moulds are similar, with plant-like and animal-like phases.

(Today many fossils of early multi-celled beings, most microscopic but some up to a metre long, are found in the Ediacaran Hills, at the foot of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges.)

Multi-celled life came at a significant cost for individual cells, since they couldn’t keep multiplying without threatening the survival of the whole organism. Some even had to die after they had made their contribution – like the cells that are forfeited in order for human fingers to develop from a mitten-like stub.

So a new internal system emerged to coordinate the duplication, differentiation and death of cells. And stimulatory chemicals (hormones) prompted the interactions. Cancer is one example of the coordination breaking down. An animal’s auto-immune system seems unable to stop these aggressive cells from cloning and invading various organs.

Multi-celled life came at a cost for the whole organism too. It took a while for the undifferentiated cells (stem cells) in one of these organisms to become specialized, and then once specialized they could make only minor repairs. So while single-celled beings could theoretically go on cloning themselves indefinitely, multi-celled beings had a developmental life cycle of infancy, maturity, aging and death.

At first they reproduced by creating ‘offspringing’ bodies as clones of the parent (spores). But the shared creation of offspring evolved when a few beings created a new kind of cell, loosely called male and female cells, each with only half the chromosomes needed to be viable.

Shared offspring were created when a male cell from one parent paired in the water with a female cell from another, then multiplied without splitting apart, formed layers and differentiated all over again, in the same form as the organism that produced them.

But since each offspring had its own new combination of genes it always differed slightly from its parents and its siblings.

Whether caused by random mutations or creative attentiveness, many gradual changes over generations, as well as a few sudden major ones, increased diversity and, as we shall see, diversity proved most useful to beings when an environmental crisis forced them to either adapt or die. Because sexual reproduction enabled more complex organization within an individual than cloning methods could, its overall effect was to enhance evolution.

But what about the emergence of inevitable death for individual multi-celled beings?

It may not be much consolation, but the 2,500-year-old view quoted above is echoed in today’s concept of transformational change, in which death is an organic version of a giant star releasing new elements and compounds as it explodes in a supernova.

The physical transformation is due to the enterprise of certain microbes whose job is feeding on the dead bodies and dissolving them into their elements. These are gradually re-assembled: some as part of a rock, body of water, or gas; some as part of a micro-organism; and from now on some as part of a larger being.

So one way in which organisms go on living after death is as some other part of the web of life.

But at the heart of this story there is another transformational change involved in the death of a giant star and in the death of an individual being. It is based on the genius that each different way of being contributes to evolution.

According to this viewpoint ‘everything taking form in nature’ contributes to an evolving way of being for our Universe, which continues in other forms after it has gone. In other words evolution is an unfolding through increasing, interconnected diversity.

Thus features of our infant Universe, such as its balance between clumping and splitting apart, were carried over into its galaxies and its solar systems, and from there onto our planet Earth, which then added its particular ways of being. These were carried over into Earth’s first organisms, which then introduced ways of being alive. And these were carried over to later organisms that added their ways. This fractal branching pattern would keep being repeated, with increasing complexity.

Thus, whenever you take a breath, you are benefiting not only from the supernova that energized our solar system, but also from Earth’s first tiny organisms. As we have seen some produced the oxygen gas you are breathing, others pioneered breathing it, and together they have been keeping Earth’s cycles of vital elements going for at least 2.5 billion years.

Of course you also rely on the commitment of the 60 trillion of their descendants that work constantly to maintain you, body and soul.

You may like to pause and consider how ways of being that have emerged at this point relate to you – in your family and in a broader social context. Recall an experience of clumping and then splitting apart; or a situation when you transformed competition into synergy; or a time when you really enjoyed sharing the creation of offspring!

Speaking of which, next time you fall in love, try seeing it as a personal encounter with the cosmic interplay of expansion and contraction.

At first you cannot see or think of anything or anyone but each other - it is a little like being pulled into a Black Hole. You have some kind of eruption and begin to drift apart - it is a little like setting off into our Universe’s immense dark expanding spaces. You decide to stay together but keep your individual identities - it is a little like joining in the gravitational dance of Earth and Moon.

From macro to micro, everything is connected as part of our Universe.

Of course this is a metaphysical interpretation of the science available, that is to say it goes ‘beyond physics’. And although it is in line with the metaphysics of a man generally acknowledged as the 20th Century's greatest scientific thinker, Albert Einstein, it is only one among many interpretations of our Universe, scientific and spiritual.

So if you judge the formal scientific method or a religious text to be the only source of truth, you will have difficulty with this approach. But if you feel some kind of inspiration from your earthly and heavenly environment that you can’t explain rationally I hope you will read on, suspending disbelief for the time being.

Not only do humans seem to have always explained their environment in a combination of physics and metaphysics, but it also seems to be one of the main things that distinguish us from other species.

As this story will tell, the test of a physical or metaphysical explanation is its impact on the culture of the group that accepts it. And the diversity in humans’ interpretations merely echoes the diversity in our Universe’s more material phenomena – from galaxies to organisms.

We can’t hope to understand the vastness or intricacy of our world.

But today it seems to be more vital than ever before that we at least try to agree that all metaphysical interpretations are individual facets of a mysterious, unknowable whole, catching light from different directions like a great disco ball, and attracting our creative attentiveness with their collective sparkle?

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"The Repentant Magdalen" by Georges de la Tour, 1640,
held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
It is the earliest of several similar paintings by him.
The skull and mirror are seen as emblems
of the transience of life and the limited nature of our vision.
(Another Google image)