At 12:58 PM 12/29/2014, Frederik wrote:
But still you seem to presuppose a "genes first" approach to early evolution.
HP: I was not addressing the origin of life, but how it works. Of course I agree there was a chemical substrate at the origin. You say, "But the structure of the metabolic network into which these proteins flow was always-already there - it is the replication of this structure which constitutes the "analog" inheritance." I agree there must have been the basic chemical components before the first heritable symbolic control; but I don't see how these components alone could be reliably heritable. I need to explain why I think the only hard problem is the origin of semiosis -- symbol systems that reliably store and convey heritable construction and control information.
In 1963 after attending the Wakulla Springs origin of life meeting where Oparin and Haldane first met, I decided to try their "primordial soup" hypothesis and I did my own abiogenic synthesis experiments producing many protobiomolecules, polymers, and Fox's "proteinoid microspheres" from H2O, CO2, NH3, H3PO4 and various energy sources. I was funded by NASA and at their suggestion I wrote a comprehensive review of O of L research (with the help of (now) Prof. Dean Kenyon, one of my PhD students), See <https://www.academia.edu/863878/Experimental_approaches_to_the_origin_of_life_problem>Experimental<https://www.academia.edu/863878/Experimental_approaches_to_the_origin_of_life_problem> Approaches to the Origin of Life (1964). If you scan the first 5 pages you will see that any primordial soup would have been a mess. Today, there are thousands of papers extending these syntheses, and entire laboratories devoted to it. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis>Abiogensis for an up-to-date review.
What was my conclusion? I stopped doing experiments because creating the abiogenic chemical substrate for life is too easy. In fact, it is a problem because the result is too many compounds and structures. I began thinking about theories of self-replication and found von Neumann's logical description-construction argument, the physics of which I proceeded to develop as the <https://www.academia.edu/863857/Cell_psychology_an_evolutionary_approach_to_the_symbol-matter_problem>symbol-matter<https://www.academia.edu/863857/Cell_psychology_an_evolutionary_approach_to_the_symbol-matter_problem> problem.
The popular current hypothesis for the origin of symbols is the <https://www.academia.edu/863878/Experimental_approaches_to_the_origin_of_life_problem>RNA World. As a linear sequence RNA functions symbolically (i.e., it's symbol vehicles can be copied without interpretation -- a necessity for von N self-replication), but when folded it can act as an enzyme (acting iconically and indexically?) but not at the same time. The fact that enzymes can be carried to offspring in cell division does not mean they are heritable in the evolutionary sense. Only their symbolic description is heritable. How else would you copy an icon and an index?
Howard
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