Through the integration of macromolecules, the first life-form came into being on Earth – the single-cell creature :
This bacterial life-form comprises three functions of such direct sequence that it can be described as a single, relatively simple unit (complicated though it is having several DNA molecules, thousands upon thousands of RNA and protein molecules, and many millions of smaller organic molecules) whose purpose and its activity almost exactly describes the structure. The three functions are these:
(1) the cell absorbs food and converts it, by photosynthesis, into energy to absorb more food, convert it into more energy, and so on.
(2) The cell grows and,
(3) in due time, with its DNA’s help, splits into two replicas of itself, thus doubling its single activity. The purpose which such single cells at first appear to be fulfilling is that of expressing energy to the optimum.
This term’ expressing energy’ keeps recurring in the following pages and requires some explanation. By ‘expression,’ in this context, ‘to use inventively – to pursue the possible applications of energy to the limits of complex ingenuity. This means exploring the actual possibilities until the advance of intelligence has reached the point where a form of energy, human life, has acquired the means of expressing truth – intellect.
Putting aside the question of what persuaded molecules to integrate and what gave purpose to single cells, we can imagine that once such a cell is built and programmed, it and its progeny could go on indefinitely, like a perfect engine. It has no central nervous system but does not need one. Absorbing food is automatic; the cell’s DNA might cause it to grow and split automatically. The whole is kept going by self-generated energy. Eventually, the single-cell population would reach the point where it had outgrown its food supply when many cells would starve to death. Still, the rest would carry on as before, unchanging.
But this is not an ordinary cause-and-effect system. There was no purely chemical or physical cause of these cells, and they began converting matter into energy. The same influence which caused their creation continues as the force which gives them to live. They are not ordinary systems because they represent life, impelled by this will to live. This will come to them directly from life-force, impelling them not merely to continue unchanged but to take every opportunity to progress and improve their techniques of expressing energy. The same life-force would also be exerting itself to defend and protect its creation, both internally and in the biosphere (Gaia).
The fact that life-forms have changed and increased enormously points to a more significant aim, beyond the purpose to express energy. These simple cells could have achieved that purpose by adjusting their numbers and habits to the available food supply, with comparatively little change, and in a non-competitive way. History suggests that the more significant aim, to be achieved by optimum competitive expression of energy, is to develop more advanced and complex life-forms ever.
Many bacteria and algae continued in simple cell form, reproducing by identical splitting or dying and being replaced by free-floating DNA meeting suitable conditions to continually produce new cells. Genetic errors in reproduction, and random combinations of genes in the production of new cells, resulted in the emergence of cells with new characteristics, many of which survived.
Over about two thousand million years, this change process enabled life to adapt to the introduction of oxygen to the atmosphere, for instance. Today, the influenza virus can change rapidly enough to produce, each year, a new strain capable of defeating anti-bodies which were developed as rapidly the previous year to combat the old strain.
A more dramatic cause of change, which created complicated life-forms, was the integration of cells. Two or more cells joined together, forming one cell with a nucleus, a combination which increased the prospects for successful survival.
This was the first step towards achieving increased efficiency by the internal co-operation of different cells and functions.
Such integrated cells had the advantage that the nucleus could develop independently and, under protection from its external casing, free of direct interference from the world outside.
The advancing change was facilitated through reproduction. As cells became more elaborate, the effects of error and randomness in the distribution of genes became more far-reaching. Eventually, by natural selection, the creatures that progressed furthest and succeeded best were those who assumed female and male genders and reproduced sexually. Each offered its genes for random selection by the embryo.
The female gave form and the male the spark of life, which then grew independently as to fundamentals but dependent on both parents for nourishment and guidance. Sexual reproduction foreshortened the processes of change by the cross-fertilization of ever more intricate genetic variations.
Life’s early evolution, up to the development of complete cells with a nucleus, took place in the seas for about 2300 million years. Some 1000 million years later, photosynthesizing multicellular organisms – plants – had inhabited dry land, and animals followed 50 million years later. We are particularly concerned with the free-moving, intelligent higher life-forms, especially the most advanced, the human species, and the evolutionary process features that gave us our characteristics.
The foregoing scientific information was obtained from other people’s work and their writings, particularly the books already acknowledged – James Lovelock’s Gaia and Peter Russell’s The Awakening Earth.
The original photosynthesizing types of a simple cell must have multiplied until the point was reached. Once freely and abundantly present in the sea, all available elements that they required had already been converted into energy, and newly released parts were being immediately consumed.
It is well known that the influence to express energy is responsible for the universe and the creation of life. It might have been expected that when life in the sea reached this balance, the photosynthesizing cells producing oxygen (followed by other cells that were able to utilize that oxygen) would stabilize their numbers to coincide with the rate at which needed elements were newly released into the sea. This would be the optimum expression of energy, as things stood. But another influence whose objective is to advance life until it becomes aware of the truth, and to which this balance of activity, in the sea, was unacceptable stagnation.
Under this second influence (a hypothesis), specific cells, unable to accept stalemate and to feel the urge to progress, turned to the only alternative food supply – other living cells. This would seem to go contrary to the first influence (to express energy) since one cell eating another two energy convertors would be reduced to one. But the second influence, by complicating life-forms in pursuance of its objective, also served the first influence in that life was thus impelled and enabled to extend its activity onto the land and into the air.
Still confined to the sea, simple life-forms became more complicated. As food became more scarce, they had to develop locomotion means to find it and the ability to convert what they could get into the forms they needed to sustain themselves. As competition for this food increased, their movements and senses had to be more and more efficient if they were to survive.
When cells began eating each other, survival came to depend upon being well equipped for attack and defense – skilled in competitive conflict. Measures had to be taken to attempt the protection of offspring. To illustrate once more that the object of all this activity does not seem to be pure to express energy by living, but to encourage the creation of optimum intelligence, consider a food chain in the sea.
The millions of one species at the bottom of the chain feed on inorganic matter, while all the rest depend on this species, and each other, for food. Apart from the supreme predators, each species has to vastly over-reproduce just to maintain numbers and survive, a seemingly pointless exercise until its objective is perceived.
Suppose every living member of this chain was to be evaluated with respect to mass and energy and totaled one million units. Then suppose that all but the lowest species were eliminated and, after a period of adjustment to life without predators, all members of that harmless species were evaluated too. It seems certain that subject to food availability to sustain them just at this level, they must total more than a million units. This also assumes that it was predation that kept their numbers to the previous lower level.
Populations of victims and predators usually fluctuate in inverse proportion.
Victims would tend to total more because of energy retained, which would have been dissipated by the various predators consuming each other, i.e., finding, killing, and reproducing the same food. In terms of the mass and energy of living matter, all the predators would appear to be unnecessary, until it is noted that amongst species at the tops of food chains, and practically invulnerable to all predators except mankind, are Earth’s top intelligence – whales and dolphins, for example, and humans.
With complicated nuclei, the more advanced cells joined together into colonies, and colonies into organisms, the better to survive against the competition (united we stand, divided we fall). In their own interests, different colonies performed locomotive, defensive or combative functions or became direction finders and distributors for the organism, in its overall interest.
All these cellular functions, the frameworks that held them together, and the casings that protected them, required to be fed. There had to be many means of taking food, breaking it down into the numerous elements that the many different cells needed, and providing this food and oxygen to all parts as appropriate. There also had to be a nervous system to help the organism’s various functions cooperate by passing messages to and fro.
In some sense, it could be argued that all this is irrelevant, that the human race now exists. With intelligence enough to decide its future by concentrating on the future, never mind the past. But for reasons which shall become apparent, it is necessary to show our evolution so far to have been a sequence of random responses to growing influences. The situation it has brought us to is not a suitable springboard for further progress.
Now is the time for deeply thoughtful reconsideration. Were we the ignorant children of an all-wise universe, it would be difficult for that universe to justify its long-drawn-out production of ourselves and, having brought us into being to explain why it has not caused our rapid enlightenment. On the contrary, I believe that we are hoped-for pioneers of enlightenment in an ignorant universe, but still following the processes of random evolution, unaware that we have reached our utmost potential already.