Got Life?
Life did not win a cosmic lottery by getting this planet. This planet won the cosmic meritocracy by being suitable to be granted life.
There is a school of thought that says it is so unlikely for any given planet to be suitable for life, that it must be a miracle that life got any planet at all. That would be true, if life existed pre-planet, as if it were house-hunting, or waiting to be gifted with a planet. When you realize that life didn't get a planet, but that this planet got life, the "luck of the draw" concept no longer fits the context. Frankly, with the number of stars in this universe, it was inevitable that such a world happen sooner or later. It would be more miraculous if it didn't. Wherever conditions are suitable for life is where life is going to inevitably end up developing given enough eons. The inevitable result of this particular set of accidental conditions was that life forms would sit in comfortable chairs on television programs expressing amazement that their environment matches them so perfectly.
This is backwards. In reality, they match their environment perfectly. Their purposes are the outcome of their environment. This world is so beautiful not because we got lucky (to be lucky, one would have to already exist), but because we evolved standards of beauty to match whatever environment we happened to develop in. If life evolved on Titan, it would think the smell of methane was beautiful. If our planet could talk, perhaps it would be amazed that life happens to be suitable for it. Just as there are different forms of planet, there could be different forms of life.
Comments
algebradancer on Oct. 9, 2006 3:07 PM
Frankly, with the number of stars in this universe, it was inevitable that such a world happen sooner or later. It would be more miraculous if it didn't. Wherever conditions are suitable for life is where life is going to inevitably end up developing given enough eons.
I don't think we know anything about how likely or unlikely life is to evolve, given particular conditions, or even how likely such conditions are. There just isn't enough information available yet to submit a convincing proof one way or the other as to whether life is an accident or not. From my point of view, all we can do at this point is rely on Ockham's Razor to conclude tentatively that life here is an accident. It does seem the more likely explanation, after all. But to conclude it in such strong terms? Leave dogma to the dogs (and I suppose the religiously orthodox); scientifically minded people should be willing to admit that there are many mysteries remaining.
matt-arnold on Oct. 9, 2006 3:39 PM
That sounds fine and true. There are many mysteries remaining.
I don't know how you are using the word "accident". Imagine an inverted cone whose interior is covered in a series of concentric steppes or cliffs. A ball could come to rest on such cliffs, but this cone is also experiencing random vibration. Since the vibrational forces are random, the ball's movement could be described as accidental in a way similar to evolutionary variation. But the environment's shape creates selection pressures. Is it an "accident" that given enough time, the ball will eventually be trapped in the bottom tip of the cone? Is that how you are using "accident"? Evolution is variation plus selection. Variation is random. Selection is decidedly deterministic. I prefer to refer to it as so close to "inevitable" as to make no difference.
Pardon me if I speak as if I knew for sure that life inevitably develops without assistance. I mean only that it is overwhelmingly likely. After all, here we are: existing. And doing so in deafening cosmic silence. And we know that once that first spark of life somehow happens, it takes off all on its own in an evolutionary process without intervention. It's tempting to extend that to completion, by taking it as given that the first living molecules on earth self-organized from non-living complex self-replicating hydrocarbons, which themselves self-organized from the sea, each step given a million trillion billion quadrillion chances.
Pardon me, also, if I speak as if I am not just a brain in a jar being fed fake sensory signals, or as if I were dogmatically sure that flying pigs do not exist. I mean only that these conclusions, too, are overwhelmingly likely. I don't know how to phrase my statements to avoid the appearance of dogma on such topics without burdening my speech with endless disclaimers that should be implicit.
rachelann1977 on Oct. 9, 2006 3:51 PM
I like this take on things. Although, I hope I wasn't born on Titan, because I really do like methane. :-p
dbvanhorn on Oct. 10, 2006 2:38 PM
The anthropic principle is hard to shake sometimes.
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