Nature of Life

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The living symphony of life sounds from deep within the microphysical, representing the veritable completion of the fabled Great Chain of Being. This sketch from 2015 can be coordinated with a much more concrete, recent description of the fundamental physical system of living motion and psychical reality at issue (especially the chirality that deeply informs musical thematics) now to be found in the author's 'Carlyle and the Idea' (2018) at Academia.Edu, toward which interested readers of this rough sketch are directed as a kind of paved road ahead.

Readers are advised that an up-to-date discussion of the author's fundamental thesis (’The Idea’), on the origin, operation, and destiny of the World, is now found at the top of the main page under the rubric, Thematic Evolution and Prospect of 'The Idea.'

A substantial part of our work attempts to construct an adequate Theory of the Face. See 'The Soul of Life' (below) and other studies on the page, some of which remain in draft and others merely projected. (Five papers on this difficult subject are planned.)

Progressive and substantial concretion of the thesis has been recently demonstrated through focused studies (2018-2020), whose URLs are conveniently grouped below:

'The Spirit of War'
https://www.academia.edu/36536128/The_Spirit_of_War

'Carlyle and the Idea'
(https://www.academia.edu/37362600/Carlyle_and_the_Idea)

'The Last Day (Illustrated Essay)'
(https://www.academia.edu/41144933/The_Last_Day_Illustrated_Essay_)

'How the German Spirit Died (A History)'
(https://www.academia.edu/41745763/How_the_German_Spirit_Died_A_History_)

'How the Human Spirit Died (Meta-Analysis)'
(https://www.academia.edu/41985864/How_the_Human_Spirit_Died_Meta-Analysis_)

'Three Malefactors of the Communist Idea (Meta-Analytical Note)'
(https://www.academia.edu/42052811/Three_Malefactors_of_the_Communist_Idea_Meta-Analytical_Note_)

Our gradual (and still incomplete) conceptualization of absolute cosmogony, cosmology, and eschatology in its modern (often microphysical) aspects, which has arisen quite organically over several years of detailed study, may be briefly encapsulated and characterized (A-T) for the reader as follows:

A. The Idea is the fundamental reality of the World, whose existence was clearly intuited (as “hypodoche”) by Plato, operationally defined by Boehme (first as “das Rad Gottes” and subsequently as “Eternal Nature”), organically articulated by Hegel (as “the Idea”), and finally discovered to be the locus of proto-being and foundation of living motion by means of 20th century microphysics (and accurately named by it “the color vacuum”). The electron is its projection into the finite. Field theory is its "physical" basis.

B. This definition of “substance” as a completely immaterial and literally infinite, self-related, hebdomadic-triadic system of actuality within the Idea at the fundament or basis of reality constitutes the greatest discovery of the human mind which, before the end of the 21st century, upon full comprehension, will completely revolutionize religion and therefore geopolitics, as well as pedagogy, paleontology, and biophysics.  The seat of the animating principle in organisms can now be described and explained.

C. Briefly, the research for this book involves the cosmology, cosmogony, and eschatology (destiny) of the world as the finite projection of the Eternal Idea. The Idea itself was created by the Triune Absolute Spirit as a finite-infinite field to manifest, reward, and punish moral, aesthetic, and intellectual performances in a Living Matrix.

D. Through the vast and distributed powers of its microphysical basis, the Idea as the created conduit of Absolute Power has autonomously generated a pseudo-history in geology and astronomy. The powers of Light and Darkness guided by Eternal Life deep within the fundament sustain the finite living motion of which we are aware through biology and empower conscious awareness in animals. Biopsychological functioning and all positive intellectual achievement in Mankind have their roots in the Idea.

E. Moreover, though unseen, the silent workings of a vast cosmological Absolute Hebdomad (deduced through study of the Idea in the 17th century) mercifully overarch and limit the Inchoate Life of the Sinister Itself--a Cosmic Disruptor also previously unsuspected that is responsible for the nocturnal Dream Life of animals. Is this a conceptual solution to the mysterious phenomena of telepathy and clairvoyance?

F. Biological and psychic life thus have always been suspended between two great cosmological powers representing a generalized War Between Infinite and Finite Life that began with King Lucifer, and which in its present form continually tests, through Contention, War, and Worldly Contrariety, the whole of Living Being as it follows a tortured and fateful course between Life and Death according to the much-lamented plan chosen by the Mind ("Gemüt") of Adam.

G. Finally, the hidden existence of the Idea necessarily implies a universal negative unity as the ideal origin of all gravitational and inertial phenomena, offering to science a solution at last to storied and continuing, completely beguiling conundrums (e.g., "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy") involving the ultimate structure of the cosmos.

H. By tracing the Idea's manifold determinations of physical, biological, and psychic being, then, the present study seeks to explicate the final, and heretofore unsuspected, links in the fabled Great Chain of Being for the edification of Mankind. Inherently opposing it, pathetically and even insanely, is guileless materialism.

I. The war of materialism against idealism eventually culminated in the death of the German Spirit (1918). The main intellectual cause of German spiritual morbidity, however, is traceable to events within the Reformation (1517-1546). This did not prevent a period of optimism within Prussian education and science (1800-1840).

J. The theft of Silesia (1946) was an intentionally demoralizing spiritual crime against Germany with major consequences for the spiritual life of the world. The German Spirit's whole turbulent career constituted a vacillation on renunciation of self-will, and this latter always was the essential content of the Absolute Mind in Germany.

K. Germany's fatal spiritual debility can be considered to be a world "contagion" that spread centrifugally from the center of Europe to the whole Human Race which, therefore, is itself now in the throes of an analogous spiritual death, self-contemplation, and deliverance from the finite. The Zero-Hour is imminent.

L. Each of the Six Days (in Moses) is now fundamentally understood to mean a thousand-year period. Thus, Creation has all along been continuous and--after 6,000 years--will soon be completed (the argument proposes a means to confirm or deny the asserted beginning of 3,970 B.C.). Thus, the Day of Rest (for the Community of Heaven) will soon arrive for the self-elect of Mankind.

M. This tortured path was, of course, divinely foreseen but nevertheless represents an accommodative posture which was not at first understood. The Creator's response achieves a wise and just outcome despite the wreck and pain arising from myopic creatural assertion and pathetic gratification, as recounted in the mosaic story of old.

N. In fact, Talmudic commentators reached this conclusion in the 2nd or 3rd century A.D.--amending (in 'Sanhedrin 97a') the original mosaic interpretation of once-and-for-all Creation in favor of Continuous Creation with a clear Limit or End, specified as 6,000 years (each "day of creation," as mentioned above, being 1,000 years).

O. Thus, Moses (properly cogitated) was right but his dicta were for a long period taken wrongly--perforce leading the Christians astray through an accident of church history that remains a stumbling block up to the present day. See the author's 'The Last Day (Illustrated Essay).'

P. We know from modern physics that the "physical" world at the fundament is sustained by completely immaterial field relations that never cease, or else creation-in-process would not maintain itself. The creative motion is mathematically and physically infinite but disguises its own infinity--the chief insight, credited to Dirac, supporting Absolute Physics.

Q. Hence, it is now clear that the Creation--continuous since the beginning--is approaching its End and Goal. The Last Day is thus imminent and will arrive within the present decade, according to the wisest Christian view, this actually having been announced four centuries ago in German idealism.

R. The Eternal Word's role has always been to Shine Divinely (inwardly) in the gloom and darkness of the outward finite (the "Field of the Reprehensible") for salvation's sake (see 'Carlyle and the Idea'). It is this that Jesus of Nazareth spoke of, and it is this his followers embody, when they speak of the "true bread from heaven," etc..

S. This is why Christians can claim that the finalized ("Third") Temple of God is already in existence and is composed of living stones (minus the winnowed Condemned and Damned) whose essence will endure forever in God.

T. Our thesis is only now emerging in its final form. This is because the horizon of knowledge keeps receding as the true depth is revealed--the world is a set of nested dolls and the innermost doll is God, who is unknowably deep (but friendly, since we are Him in disguise when we abandon our finite wills).

Is one of the roles of theory in biology answering the question ‘‘What is life?’’ This is true of theory in many other fields of science. So why should not it be the case for biology? Yet efforts to identify unifying concepts and principles of life have been disappointing, leading some (pluralists) to conclude that life is not a natural kind. In this essay I argue that such judgments are premature. Life as we know it on Earth today represents a single example and moreover there is positive evidence that it may be unrepresentative of life considered generally. Furthermore, as I discuss, the prototype for theorizing about life has traditionally been based on multicellular plants and animals. Yet biologists have discovered that the latter represent a rare, exotic, and fairly recent form of Earth life. By far the oldest, toughest, most extensive, and diverse form of life on our planet is unicellular, prokaryotic microbes, and there are reasons to suppose that this is almost certainly true elsewhere in the universe as well. If there are explanatorily and predictively powerful, biologi- cally distinctive principles for life that can be gleaned from our insular example of life it is more likely that they will be found among the microbes. I discuss some provocative ways in which unicellular microbes differ from multicel- lular eukaryotes and argue that some of them just might provide us with key insights into the nature of life.

In the antiquity, the essence of life processes was considered a kind of creative fire (Heraclitus, the Stoa). Also, in modern times, some concepts were formulated according to which a common fire was supposed to be essential for life (E. Pflüger, W. Preyer). However, results of some investiga-tions carried out in the last decades indicate that the range of essential factors constituting life is richer and involves many physical processes, as well as chemical and informational ones. Although combustion may not be considered as the basic factor constituting life, the phrase "life is fire" may now be regarded as a heuristically {very} fruitful metaphor.
It has been shown that both fire and physical plasma share many features. Moreover, there are also properties that are common to fire, plasma and life (Tables 1, 2, and 3). In this regard, no wonder that concepts were put forward, claiming the existence of a specific type of physical plasma unique to life itself. This new state of matter was termed bioplasma (W. Sedlak 1967, W. M. Inyushin et al. 1968). So far, the existence of this specific type of plasma has not yet been proven experimentally. Therefore, in the present work the following objectives were set: 1) identifying the common as well as differentiating features of fire, plasma and life and, on the basis of these data, 2) showing that if the claim of the existence of bioplasma was a metaphor only, it may function as a modern and deep-ened re-formulation of the ancient life-as-fire metaphor. This life-as-plasma metaphor should give rise to a new class of models of the living systems. It may be hoped that by providing even such results, the value of the bioplasma concept will be established in modern science.

Just as religion is impassable to its own dogmatic philosophies and ideas, present day science also acts in the same manner. Embracing its reductionist approach, it loses its sight to the most beautiful and insightful possibilities associated with the cosmos and its fundamental constituents around us. The present paper is a holistic ride into few of life’s beautiful constructs that occur as a playful act of the cosmos, and in part hypothesize that the dynamic biological structures or forms could be thought of as frozen energy patterns. Here, the supposition is that the electromagnetic (EM) fields that envelop our ecosystems play a central role in its functioning and evolution acting as a unified network interconnecting life at various scales. Supporting a synergetic and holistic view, the present paper is skeptical about the present school of thought, and to other investigations carried out under the sheath of modern science by raising a few fundamental questions.

The Nature of Life: How can we characterize the nature of life? Against other assumptions, science has shown that life is nothing but physics and chemistry, and that there is no mysterious vital force included. Still, life strikes us as special. Can we describe this by its form? Is life an informational phenomenon maybe?