Commentary: The Voice of the Universe

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I think heard God speak a few years ago.

Not "god" in the Judeo-Christian or Muslim sense, nor even to me, at least not directly. But there is, I feel, a message being delivered by "something" powerful to all people who can and are willing see it. And I'm not talking about some mystical "voice from heaven" booming from the sky, either.

Not at all.

In fact, it came in the form of a blonde wraith with an angelic voice singing a song that had lyrics with such a profound meaning that I had to wonder: could the human author of those words really have such a deep and powerful understanding of the world as the one expressed in that song? Or did - somehow - this "force" manage to get itself expressed in such a way as it could be percieved and understood by those who may be able to recieve it? If the latter, could it have been a 'concious' effort, or is it simply "inevitable" - something that was bound to happen sooner or later, almost by "accident"?

I don't know.

All I DO know is that the message is there, and clear as a bell for those with the background knowledge and understanding of certain things to be able to easily decrypt it, and a willingness to "hear" such a message to begin with. Or, at least I think it is...

Don't get me wrong, here. I am NO mystic by any means. I am not into this "New Age" bullshit. I believe that for something to be true, it should make some sense in some way in relation to other 'true' things. And, in a wierd way, this does, and also in some ways, it turns some things I hold to be true updside down, while at the same time reinforcing others. I haven't let go of them, but I do admit to be being a bit taken aback, and forced to look at things somehow differently in some ways.

The "force" I am talking about is not, in my view, some ethereal intelligent, all-knowing awareness. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I'm talking about what most people call the "evolutionary algorithm'. However in my way of thinking, that 'algorithm' is simply the mathematical description of something more 'vague' or 'general' that I call the 'evolutionary principle' - the principle that allows for, even forces, change to occur in this world, and that this change leads inexorably to increasing complexity (decreases in entropy) in "local" systems on a scale that converges somewhere near the middle between the largest (cosmic) scales and the smallest (atomic to Planck) scales.

I also not suggesting that this force is 'consciously' directed by some "intelligence'. Rather, I think it's a natural property, emergent from the fundamental characteristics of nature, such as the Laws of Thermodynamics and the properties of matter and energy, and, in some way, is also somehow responsible for them, in the sense that these characteristics ARE the result of the earliest stages of the evolution of the universe. For me, this is perhaps one way to define 'god', if one needs to define something as such; it's the fundamental driver of change change and complexity in the universe and makes everything - from heavy metals to Heavy Metal - possible.

Most people look at "evolution" as the process that governs how biological life changes over time, or evolves. Generally, life is the only context it's even considered in. But in reality, there is no dividing line between "life" and "non-life" in the universe. That's an arbitrary disctinction that we give to systems that exhibit certain qualities that we specify, and even there, we have certain problems in demarcating the line between life and non-life when we get down to the lower ends of the life chain. Things like viruses and prions, for example, raise the question of whether or not they are 'alive'. Some even go so far as to say that the nucleic acids are essentially 'alive'. Basically, in the "spectrum" of processes and systems through which the evolutionary principle is expressed, biological life is just one part of it.

What we call 'life' is really just a very complicated system of non-living components. We have to conciously try to keep in mind that 'life' is a human distinction, and that what we call biology is just one context in which evolution can be expressed. However, let's not make the mistake of over-generalizing, either; the degree of complexity involved in what we call 'life' is an important stage in evolution, and I'll come back to why that is so shortly. But in essence, life is really just a set of emergent qualities arising from systems of systems built upon layer upon layers of change and complexity that have been 'evolving' over billions of years through a combination of the laws of physics and what basically amounts to 'luck'. A direct line can be traced not just back to the earliest life forms on earth, but back to the very origins of the universe itself.

You can see evolution expressed in many ways. The 'universe' has evolved and continues to evolve from the Big Bang onwards. Matter and energy 'evolved', with protons, neutrons, electrons, and all the other "elementary particles" being built up of simpler particles, themselves constructed of even smaller parts that we have yet to fully understand, that condensed out of the hot soup that was expelled from the initial singularity at the time of the Big Bang.

Not all evolutionary "lines" need be long or complex, stars are not going to evolve into something more than they already are. However, they DO lay the foundation of and become components themselves of further evolutionary systems to be built on top of them, and this can even happen in different ways. Matter was formed with certain inherent characteristics that allow for change and emergent complexity, even starting with a relatively limited set of materials having a limited number of qualities. In fact, the vast majority of matter created in the early universe consisted of only hydrogen and some helium.

It took further steps for the other elements necessary to our existence to be created, such as carbon, oxygen, iron, and the rest. These elements were formed in the heart of stars through nuclear fusion, itself only possible through the fact that hydrogen and helium, being matter, have a property called "mass" and therefore have gravity. Without gravity, the first stars could not have formed out of the primordial hydrogen, nor could the nuclear fusion required for the transormation of hydrogen and helium into all the other elements we know be started, lighting the furnaces that essentially were the foundries in which all the components necessary for complexity - and life - were forged.

This is amazing.

Chemistry, and hence biology, would not be possible without this evolutionary step. to have more to think about, even that is not 'enough', though. Without elementary particles having a property known as 'charge' (itself one of the properties stamped on the elementary particles during the Big Bang), even chemistry, dependent upon the positive and negative charges of atoms, would not exist.

But it does.

And it is chemistry which allows atoms to combine in myriad ways as molecules, the building blocks of the everyday matter-based objects and systems we see around us: water, rocks, and so forth. Of course, just having 'matter' doesn't allow for chemistry or biology to happen. You need also something to "instigate" it: energy. Luckily, that's also provided for. Light is one form. Heat is another. Kinetic energy - movement - is also another. The fact that different forms of energy can be converted into one or the other is also important.

Anyway...moving on - starting from this level and moving up, it becomes clear that the Universe is an amazing construct. Many different aspects of it combine to generate the sorts of change that allow for increasing complexity at many levels in many ways, each of which in turn allows for more further 'up'. The atoms of the various elements can combine in different ways - in understood and specific ways - to create more complex molecules, and so on.

Water, for example, is one composed of hydrogen and oxygen. Iron and other elements can combine to create other materials. Eventually, this type of "inorganic chemistry" leads to another, more complex one: organic chemistry, through which the molecules required for what we call "life" are built up.

When you look at a planetary system like our own Solar System, you see a fairly complex system that is the result of billions of years of evolution, even at this scale. There is structure and complexity there, though to be sure, of a rudimentary and gross kind - at least at the planetary scale. There are many forms of energy at work keeping things 'going' - heat, light, kinetic energy, etc. There are complex organic and inorganic materials there in various forms. And such planetary systems themselves allow for more complex degree of evolution to occur within them at another scale and degree of complexity - life.

I don't know if there are some sets of conditions in which life (or something similar enough to it in certain ways so that we could generally call it 'life), can exist outside of a solar system, but I tend to think not. Of the things necessary for the evolution from organic molecules to what we call 'life', some important 'ingredients' are needed, such as time, different types of energy within certain 'ranges' as to type and quantity, and an environment with some 'mix' of stability and enough 'elbow room' for incremental change to occur without drastic changes frequently 'wiping the slate clean'. Such systems are hard to find outside of a planet with the right composition and conditions located in an orbit around a star within certain parameters. Other environments generally seem to be too choatic and unstable or too homogenous. Some have too much energy, some too little.

Very few seem to be 'just right'.

Once such a situation exists, however, I feel pretty certain that the evolutionary processes that can lead to life will proceed and, given time, will eventually lead systems that we'd call "life". In fact, I think it's inevitable, given the right conditions and time: it's all based on the laws of physics, and the same laws operate everywhere all the time.

I further believe that - at least at the 'lower levels', life in one system would resemble life in most any other, much as our solar system likely remembles one in any other except perhaps in certain details like the number, types, and sizes of planets, and their orbits, for example. Variety can only vary (increase) so much at a given degree of complexity in structural possibilities.

This means that life in other places could be (and in my opinion is most likely) based on nucleic acids, or perhaps on different but very similar molecules with a similar purpose, and if so, then you have your viruses and prions and perhaps even bacteria and simple plant life being very similar from planet to planet, all else being 'equal' (or close). While it's very unlikely that life would evolve exactly as it has on earth - there are far too many variables involved - there would be perhaps similar stages of evolution and similar solutions found to various environmental problems.

Just look at the variety of life on earth - millions of species in most any environment possible. Still, all have certain similarities, and some due not simply to relation through direct genetic lineage. Many are due to environmental influences on evolution across species, with different species working out similar solutions to the same environmental problems: fins to get around in water, legs on land, and wings in the air, for example. Fish and dolphins have fins, bats and birds their wings, and so on.

I'm not going to get into a discourse here on Darwin's work on the evolution of species - all of this has led up to a conclusion I've reached in a slightly different context, and that is that evolution is a 'force' or 'principle' of the universe that is created by and expressed through the very structure of the universe itself and what it's made of. It began at the Beginning and continues on up through every level of structure and complexity that exists. It's unavoidable and inexorable. It's everywhere, all the time. I will say, however, that Darwin, Dawkins, and Stanovich are pretty close, but their context is too limited; genetics, and even memetics, are only a couple of contexts in which evolution is at work...

And it continues to work.

Is all change 'evolution'? Well, that's hard to say. I would say that generally all change is (or can be) a PART of evolution. The water cycle - where liquid water evaporates to water vapor through being heated, rises into the air, cools, condenses back into a liquid and falls to the gruond as rain would not be considered 'evolution' by most people. But it CAN be seen as a system, or process, that has arisen THROUGH evolution (let's remember that most elements and their properties are the result OF evolution!) and is important TO evolution at other levels or in other systems.

Or take a few other examples...

Knives, for example, have evolved over time. Cars have evolved. Look at them - from the earliest stone-flake knives on up through the huge variety of them available today. Your Model-T up through the modern F1 racer or passenger car or 18-wheelers of today. Then take a look at the famous picture illustrating the evolution of Man, from the early australopithecines up through modern Home Sapiens. I don't think you can say that is evolution, but the others are not, simply because one occured through 'nature' and the others are 'man-made'. Look close - the Evolutionary Principle is there, if you care to see it, and not just metaphorically or analogously...

...which brings me back to my earlier point about why 'biology' is an important step IN evolution. Biology allows for the creation of systems that can be ACTIVE agents OF evolution, agents that can participate in the process - and even direct it. This seems perfectly logical to me - an almost inescapable conclusion, in many ways, if you think about it. We, for example, as 'agents of evolution', participate in and direct the evolution of many types of systems ourselves: our technology and social structures, for example, all 'evolve' through us. It's also very possible we're more involved there than we may know or want to be in evolution; in creating computers and - eventually - artificial intelligence, are we perhaps creating our successors at the 'pinnacle' of evolution - that of the evolution of intelligence in the universe?

I've now reached a point in this line of thought where it can branch off into a few other directions that I don't have time to get into just now (but probably will later). This discussion started with a message in the lyrics of a song...

Given what I've said above, and assuming - simplistically as I've put it - that it's somewhat close to 'correct', then I think it's hard to miss the message embodied in the below lyrics. Yes, you can limit the the context to a 'genetic' one, but I see it as also valid in the more broad, general sense I describe above.

And that's also where my question comes from - is the writer of the lyrics intentionally expressing the above idea - even if in the limited genetic context a la Darwin and Dawkins - or was he meaning to express something else - perhaps a people's cultural heritage - and it just "seems" like there's a deeper meaning?

Personally, irregardless of what was in the lyricist's mind when he wrote the song, I feel that the message I percieve IS there, and it's an important one. It's one that allows a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world, and also one which connects those understandings in a clear, logical, and useful way...if we chose to get it. It is not at all a big stretch to consider it as 'god' talking to us - by whatever mechanism. And regardless of your belief or faith, or even how you elect to define what 'god' is, it works on different levels, and in that sense, it can also be seen as a sort of 'bridge' between people of different points of view. Even the most diehard atheist cannot but avoid being touched by this song, I think, and the truth it carries.


Read the lyrics...

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THE VOICE

winner 1996 Eurovision Song Contest
performed by Eimear Quinn
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I hear your voice on the wind,
And I hear you call out my name...

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"Listen, my child," you say to me
"I am the voice of your history.
Be not afraid - come follow me,
Answer my call and I'll set you free."

REFRAIN
I am the voice in the wind and the pouring rain,
I am the voice of your hunger and pain.
I am the voice that always is calling you,
I am the voice, and I will remain.

I am the voice in the fields when the Summer's gone,
The dance of the leaves when the Autumn winds blow.
Ne'er do I sleep throughout all the cold Winter long,
I am the force that in Spring-time will grow.

I am the voice of the past that will always be,
Filled with my sorrows and blood in my fields.
I am the voice of the future...
Bring me your peace, bring me your peace,
And my wounds - they will heal.

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And now, watch the video:

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Oh well. Maybe I'm just nuts. Or a misguided romantic with a too scientific view of the world.

Or maybe...