Here we go, reinventing the wheel.
Press Release: “The National Science Foundation has awarded $15.5 million to researchers at the University of Chicago over six years to establish a new field of physics to understand adaptation in living matter.” *
You’re about to fork over $7,078 your our taxes per day during the course of a half dozen years so that people at the U. of Chicago can apply physics to what we already know from paleontology, paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, neurology, and biochemistry. I just can’t wait for the cascade of papers, no doubt all of them peer-reviewed that the grant winners will produce. Ignore that some of the money will fall into the abyss of administrators’ expenses and travel (to conferences)—the researchers probably never heard of conference calls, Zoom meetings, and email.
I could save the NSF—and you—money.The answer the grantees are looking for is called a brain, with its branching nerves, synapses, neurotransmitters, and all. It’s called stimulus-response and survival. It’s called random adaptations and DNA inheritance. There, now you have it on the cheap. Just saved you 15.5 mil. You’re welcome.
Lest you call me a closed-minded ignoramus, I will provide a short discussion.
Do sponges Dream when They Sleep?
Brains, Donald? Surely, you jest in an Occam’s type of humor.
In 1980 I attended conference on sponges, just about, if not, the simplest multicellular animals composed of cells with different functions working to support survival. Simultaneously. I was neighbor to a visiting medical researcher from Israel who was studying sponges in a search for their means of intercellular communication.
But there’s more to the story.
Seems that brainless sponges can go to sleep. Somehow the cells in a sponge cooperate in a rest period. The cells shut down through some communication system—maybe biochemical activity. That they can communicate and cooperate in the absence of a central nervous system might be a key to understanding cancer cells. Strange behavior in an animal without interconnected neurons.These cooperating cells also seem to recognize enemies, as clear boundaries separate encrusting sponges and living coral polyps, another group of simple animals.
Is it all biochemistry? Or are there physical forces involved, Newtonian or quantum mechanical forces? If the latter two, will our 15.5 million dollars provide proof? I’m not confident. As in most NSF funded projects, like the shrimp on a treadmill, there will probably be no accountability. And since this particular expenditure will fund a ”Center,” I suspect the funding will be renewed six years from now, 12 years from now, and ad infinitum. Justification will lie in the published research papers and government inertia.
Quantum Evolutionary Biology?
A perusal of books on biology and physics might give a hint about what our 15.5 million bucks might buy. Adrian Bejan’s 2016 book The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything and his prior (2013) co-authored (with J. Peder Zane) book Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organizations might foreshadow the U. Of Chicago’s potential output. You are free to see if there is potential for advancing our understanding of adaptation in living matter and information storage.
Unless physicists can pinpoint the subatomic nature of cell communication, tying for example, superposition and entanglement to evolutionary change, I can’t see justification for the expenditure of $15,5 million over six years. Unless they can show that pressure, and not biochemistry or electrochemistry, is how nerves send signals, I have grave doubts about studies focused on “how living matter can store, retrieve, and process information.”
Is physics related to biochemistry? Short answer: Yes. But skeptic that I am, I can’t imagine that this expenditure will produce anything beyond neologisms and new “fields” of study that will perpetuate for decades among the “privileged in-the-know researchers” with little concrete results—much like string theorists who have as yet to run an experiment on a “string,” but who keep getting NSF grants.
Maybe Brains Aren’t All We Hype Them To Be
One could argue that models of matter storing information already exist in crystal formation that is the process of joining molecules in repeated patterns that create minerals abiotically. But I would ascribe those patterns more to chemistry than to physics. Minerals can be thought of as manifestations of chemical properties like valences and the electromagnetic rules of bonding. Sure, some researchers have hypothesized that clay minerals provided a pattern for early life to piggy back, but that remains hypothetical.
Information?
Info? That’s the goto topic among astrophysicists when they write about black holes nowadays. Any component of the Cosmos, from a rock to a person, can be thought of as a carrier of information. Black holes are where such information goes into the eternal trash basket. In the context of astrophysics, I suppose all that trashed information arose from the Big Bang. Will the folks at the new Center for Living Systems resolve the as yet unsolved problems centered in the evolution of this “information”? Will they find the answers in six years? With 15,5 million dollars?
Let’s set a date, say May 18,, 2030, to reassess. See you then. Starbucks? Okay. Maybe one of the Center’s researchers flush with grant money will buy us coffee and explain.
*https://news.uchicago.edu/story/nsf-establish-155m-center-living-systems-university-chicago
Press Release: “The National Science Foundation has awarded $15.5 million to researchers at the University of Chicago over six years to establish a new field of physics to understand adaptation in living matter.” *
You’re about to fork over $7,078 your our taxes per day during the course of a half dozen years so that people at the U. of Chicago can apply physics to what we already know from paleontology, paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, neurology, and biochemistry. I just can’t wait for the cascade of papers, no doubt all of them peer-reviewed that the grant winners will produce. Ignore that some of the money will fall into the abyss of administrators’ expenses and travel (to conferences)—the researchers probably never heard of conference calls, Zoom meetings, and email.
I could save the NSF—and you—money.The answer the grantees are looking for is called a brain, with its branching nerves, synapses, neurotransmitters, and all. It’s called stimulus-response and survival. It’s called random adaptations and DNA inheritance. There, now you have it on the cheap. Just saved you 15.5 mil. You’re welcome.
Lest you call me a closed-minded ignoramus, I will provide a short discussion.
Do sponges Dream when They Sleep?
Brains, Donald? Surely, you jest in an Occam’s type of humor.
In 1980 I attended conference on sponges, just about, if not, the simplest multicellular animals composed of cells with different functions working to support survival. Simultaneously. I was neighbor to a visiting medical researcher from Israel who was studying sponges in a search for their means of intercellular communication.
But there’s more to the story.
Seems that brainless sponges can go to sleep. Somehow the cells in a sponge cooperate in a rest period. The cells shut down through some communication system—maybe biochemical activity. That they can communicate and cooperate in the absence of a central nervous system might be a key to understanding cancer cells. Strange behavior in an animal without interconnected neurons.These cooperating cells also seem to recognize enemies, as clear boundaries separate encrusting sponges and living coral polyps, another group of simple animals.
Is it all biochemistry? Or are there physical forces involved, Newtonian or quantum mechanical forces? If the latter two, will our 15.5 million dollars provide proof? I’m not confident. As in most NSF funded projects, like the shrimp on a treadmill, there will probably be no accountability. And since this particular expenditure will fund a ”Center,” I suspect the funding will be renewed six years from now, 12 years from now, and ad infinitum. Justification will lie in the published research papers and government inertia.
Quantum Evolutionary Biology?
A perusal of books on biology and physics might give a hint about what our 15.5 million bucks might buy. Adrian Bejan’s 2016 book The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything and his prior (2013) co-authored (with J. Peder Zane) book Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organizations might foreshadow the U. Of Chicago’s potential output. You are free to see if there is potential for advancing our understanding of adaptation in living matter and information storage.
Unless physicists can pinpoint the subatomic nature of cell communication, tying for example, superposition and entanglement to evolutionary change, I can’t see justification for the expenditure of $15,5 million over six years. Unless they can show that pressure, and not biochemistry or electrochemistry, is how nerves send signals, I have grave doubts about studies focused on “how living matter can store, retrieve, and process information.”
Is physics related to biochemistry? Short answer: Yes. But skeptic that I am, I can’t imagine that this expenditure will produce anything beyond neologisms and new “fields” of study that will perpetuate for decades among the “privileged in-the-know researchers” with little concrete results—much like string theorists who have as yet to run an experiment on a “string,” but who keep getting NSF grants.
Maybe Brains Aren’t All We Hype Them To Be
One could argue that models of matter storing information already exist in crystal formation that is the process of joining molecules in repeated patterns that create minerals abiotically. But I would ascribe those patterns more to chemistry than to physics. Minerals can be thought of as manifestations of chemical properties like valences and the electromagnetic rules of bonding. Sure, some researchers have hypothesized that clay minerals provided a pattern for early life to piggy back, but that remains hypothetical.
Information?
Info? That’s the goto topic among astrophysicists when they write about black holes nowadays. Any component of the Cosmos, from a rock to a person, can be thought of as a carrier of information. Black holes are where such information goes into the eternal trash basket. In the context of astrophysics, I suppose all that trashed information arose from the Big Bang. Will the folks at the new Center for Living Systems resolve the as yet unsolved problems centered in the evolution of this “information”? Will they find the answers in six years? With 15,5 million dollars?
Let’s set a date, say May 18,, 2030, to reassess. See you then. Starbucks? Okay. Maybe one of the Center’s researchers flush with grant money will buy us coffee and explain.
*https://news.uchicago.edu/story/nsf-establish-155m-center-living-systems-university-chicago
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