posted 18. February 2005 02:56                    

The Second Ring of Life; The Vesica Attractor
by Christopher Humphrey

The fossil record shows a disparity of complex body plans at their apperance in the early Cambrian.
The individual eukaryote cannot build these structures. They did not carry within themselves a blue print for an overall structure prior to their apperance.
Science today is attempting to answer these questions via genomic constraints.
Recently discovered fossil evidence has led this author to develop a new evolutionary model that suggest the following;The missing information in the original body design was provided by a wave function acting on a mass of oolitic spheres bound by a microbial substrate.
This substrate crystallized into an autopoietic system, the first complex animal life, that then spawn an entire phyla.
This central archetypal form then becomes a sustained, central information bank for the phyla,releasing new genetic information in pulses over time.
This model not only accounts for the original forms, but also genetic control patterns of punctuated equilibrium. This is what the new evidence is showing in the context of the fossil record.


Autopoiesis
From Wikipedia,
Autopoiesis literally means "auto (self)-creation" (from the Greek: auto - αυτό for self- and poiesis - ποίησις for creation or production) and expresses a fundamental complementarity between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana in 1973

The Mystery of the Cambrian

Just prior to the Cambrian explosion, the sea contained a few multi-celled organisms, worms, sponges, and an assortment of single celled protozoan, but mostly filaments of blue green algae called cyanobacteria. Suddenly, 530 million years ago, something triggered an explosion of complex life. These original basic forms are the first and largest classification of animals called the phyla. Phyla include fish, snails, trilobites, crustaceans, ect. Two things that they have in common is they are very complex and they appeared at approximately the same time in the fossil record, seemingly without a history of development. This fact has puzzled evolutionary biologists since Darwin. This great scientist was aware of the problem, but assumed further fossil discoveries would fill in the gaps. However, to this day no precursors to these creatures can be found, infact, recently discovered fossil beds in China have pushed back the emergence of highly evolved fish to the first spark of the explosion.
Current genome research has suggested the phyla arose separately, simultaneously and abruptly, from a common "primordial pond" of genetics. (Senapathy) (Independent Birth of Organisms, Genome Press, 1994).
It has been postulated by (Behe) (Darwin’s black box) that the biological systems of these creatures could not have evolved from simpler origins. They would had to have been pre-designed and constructed all at once like a watch. He calls this " Intelligent Design" and has gained some support even though it smacks of creationism, which has its roots in a theological view. In hindsight, irreducibility is on the right track as far as a logistical approach, but still falls short on locating a blueprint.

Ironically, the reaction to all this, by some of the neo-Darwinist, has been to take a dogmatic position, defending the text that states the phyla arose in a step-by-step process, and that the fossil record completely supports it, which isn't really true, but who can blame them for defending that position as no new model can explain the gap, and it is currently the consensus view.
At the calm periphery of controversy we have the newest theoretical approach. These physicist, biologists, and mathematicians deal in a systematic view of the world as patterns of relationships, rather than the traditional approach of reductionism. This type of ''systems view'' sees the world as patterns that contain information which can be utilized to see more patterns in a framework of connections that can be used as models. This type of science to me, represents an advanced perspective. A paradigm based not in the old hunter gatherer mentality, but on the predilection to see the universe as a network of cooperative functions, rather than unrelated parts to be collected and dispatched into categories.

One of these advanced perspective, "Autopoieses " developed by (Mantarana; Varela,) States that an organism can be defined as a cycle of relationships unified into a circle of self creation, that contains component parts, which make parts, that in turn make those parts, in a recursive cycle of self-making. This unified system can simply be visualized as a ring.
In the pre-Cambrian Sea, these "rings", cells floated about dividing, some formed symbiotic bonds with other cells, and eventually merged into cells of more complexity. These cells we call eukaryote. They are the cells that make up the complex animals that are about to suddenly and mysteriously appear in the Cambrian.
So now we can ask, how did these eukaryote form into these complex circular systems so suddenly? What was the unifying force that brought the separate rings together into one? "One ring to rule them all."
The answer came to me in the form of a Rosetta stone of the Cambrian era. This artifact told the story of how many came together as one, and in so doing, created a new world. This stone is in the form of a ring itself, and written on this one ring is the most ancient of languages, geometry. This sacred music of the universe tells a story of self-making, whispered in the sea by many, and brought together into one rhythmic pulse.

The Sea of Self-Making

Another theory from the top systems biologist of our time (Kauffman)( Origins of order) states that once a system reaches a threshold of complexity it can, under the right conditions, spontaneously form into a higher organizational state. He calls this "Order for free." The following process will attempt to show how life forms can emerge all at once, into rings of higher order, from a point of spontaneous organization.
This point being an attractor that starts by recapitulating pre-existing organizational phases of its environment, These "vesica attractors" begin as a points of instability between the microcosm and the macrocosm. This instability manifesting initially into concentrically formed mineral spheres called oolites. These spheres are connected by filaments of cyanobacteria that form a fabric. This fabric is then rolled together into a concentric wheel or bagel configuration that contains an enfolded pattern that represents the ebb and flow of waves and tides. This embryonic form emerging as a self-constructed, self-contained micro-environment in a stunningly short period of time.
The phases of development for the original body plans start with the simple attractor moving in smooth transitional phases from the point attractor, forming mineral spheres. The cycle attractor, cyanobacterial filaments that bind and order the spheres into a contained recursive structure. The torus attractor that opens a central aperture and connects the internal environment with external dynamics (cyclical flow of waves and tides) and then finally the self reflexive, "vesica attractor" that becomes fertilized by a eukaryote cell that enters though the central "vesica aperture" in this phase the complex cells adopt the energetic pattern built by the oolites and cyanobacterial filaments. This scenario also representing a recurring theme of evolution. The mineral kingdom preparing the environment for the simple photosynthetic cell, that intern prepares the environment for the more complex animal cell. If these phases are completed successfully, a unification results between the microcosm and the macrocosm. This dynamic link represented by the emergence of an animal of complex form.

"The vesica is the interlocking of two realms--an overlapping where two worlds merge and exchange force fields."(Gail Thomas, Ph.D)

These attractors seem to form as connecting points between two converging evolutionary arcs that overlap and spiral together to complete a circuit. These points constructing a contained biological system patterned after forces below and above, and can account for almost all the body plans that emerged during the Cambrian. Morphological disparity can be simply be traced to variances in perturbations in the separately emerging attractors.
The levels of organizations in non-biological realms that precede the emergence of life, begin as points that spiral inward. These basins form into attractors that bring order out of chaos, although the order may have existed as pre-existing probabilities, that curled up into basins where energetic thresholds are reached, or more precisely focuses pre-existing order at large into a nexus point. These nexus points form everything from black holes, stars, galaxies, to planets that make up the macro-universe. This spin is also the underlying dynamic that sustains the micro-universe of elemental particles.
What I see as a fundamental difference in the vesica attractor is in its spiraling form, it is not like any other attractor that proceeded it, in that its construction is not simply a spiral that spins in the same direction, but is formed by turning back on itself in a cycle of recursion. This recursive cycle having been patterned after the ebb and flow of tide and wave pulses. This cycle recorded in concentric layers of enfolded oolitic spheres connected by filaments of cyanobacteria.





Once the form reaches a critical mass it becomes stationary and is reformed into an egg shaped vessel. The wave pulse then becomes internalized bringing the inner clockwork pattern into a dynamic synchronicity with the macro-environment at large. These layers form a symmetrical pattern of embedded concentric channels that unite at a central basin. Seawater is directed into right and left apertures that have opened into logarithmic spirals. This energetic form being shaped by the balance between internal structure and external flow. This recursive logarithmic structure appears to be the key in the self-reflexive nature of a biological system.

Vesica Attractor; Gastropoda


Phi-wave Geometry of creation

Whirlpool Galaxy

chambered nautilus


Another key in the self-making ability of the embryonic material that forms the vesica attractor is in it's ability to shape-shift around the tendency of a fluid to seek an ordered path though and around a medium. This medium having a fine balance of cohesion and plasticity.
The next key is in the mineral content of the spheres. Aragonite, this form of calcium carbonate has properties that promote microbial growth and acts as a mineral substrate for initiating an autopoetic biochemical cycle. This mineral has been discovered to be a fundamental element in maintaining an autopoetic system in coral reefs and closed artificial systems such as salt water aquariums.
Another important roll of the oolites is in their ability to act as a dynamic scaffolding. As the aragonite spheres dissolve though chemical and mechanical forces, a synergy unfolds throughout the emerging structure, As the oolites shrink they become point attractors among the eukaryote cells, that have now adopted the fluid energetic pattern left by the cyanobacteria filaments. As the oolites lose mass they induce the production of new filaments that emerge from the outer cellular membranes of the eukaryotes. Anchoring proteins extend through the plasma membrane to link to the emerging cytoskeleton structure. Simply put, as the temporary oolitic scaffolding deconstructs, it constructs it's permanent replacement. These Anchoring-type junctions not only hold cells together but provide tissues with structural cohesion. These junctions are produced more abundantly in tissues that are subject to higher mechanical stress such as the outer skin and heart. Connective tissues begin forming flexible geodesic scaffolding by drawing in and connecting to points in space where the oolites have now vacated. These connecting points form the extracellular matrix, meanwhile the vesica apertures acts as a cycle attractor spiraling inward keeping a central tension as the embryo loses mass and takes shape, simultaneously providing a flow of renewing sea water though the recursive system as it pulses in time with wave cycles. The central apertures begins to coil in slack in the form of a layered network of connected cells. This dense mass of wound together cells will form heart tissue. This tension that connects eukaryote cells in a medium of cohesion is called (tensegrity). Tensegrity results in a crystallization of connections in the architecture of the emerging organism, enabling the individual cell though it's own intracellular matrix to respond to a potential fitness space. This crystallization of the recursive dynamic structure might well result in an "algorithmic self-assembly" of genetic probabilities.
Developing layers of the body plan are connected from heart, shell, exo-skeleton or notochord, down to the strands of DNA in the cells nucleus by this network of filaments, thus tuning the cells information bank to circuits of communication though the internal structure, then out to the universe at large. A current of information begins to flow between the micro-cellular universe below to a cognitive landscape of the macro-universe above. "Cogito ergo sum"

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Chaos and Complexity

One of the themes straddling both biological and physical sciences is the quest for a mathematical model of phenomena of emergence (spontaneous creation of order), and in particular adaptation, and a physical justification of their dynamics (which seems to violate physical laws).

The physicist Sadi Carnot, one of the founding fathers of Thermodynamics, realized that the statistical behavior of a complex system can be predicted if its parts were all identical and their interactions weak. At the beginning of the century, another French physicist, Henri Poincare`, realizing that the behavior of a complex system can become unpredictable if it consists of few parts that interact strongly, invented "chaos" theory. A system is said to exhibit the property of chaos if a slight change in the initial conditions results in large-scale differences in the result. Later, Bernard Derrida will show that a system goes through a transition from order to chaos if the strength of the interactions among its parts is gradually increased. But then very "disordered" systems spontaneously "crystallize" into a higher degree of order.
First of all, the subject is "complexity", because a system must be complex enough for any property to "emerge" out of it. Complexity can be formally defined as nonlinearity.

The world is mostly nonlinear. The science of nonlinear dynamics was originally christened "chaos theory" because from nonlinear equations unpredictable solutions emerge.

A very useful abstraction to describe the evolution of a system in time is that of a "phase space". Our ordinary space has only three dimensions (width, height, depth) but in theory we can think of spaces with any number of dimensions. A useful abstraction is that of a space with six dimensions, three of which are the usual spatial dimentions. The other three are the components of velocity along those spatial dimensions. In ordinary 3-dimensional space, a "point" can only represent the position of a system. In 6-dimensional phase space, a point represents both the position and the motion of the system. The evolution of a system is represented by some sort of shape in phase space.

The shapes that chaotic systems produce in phase space are called "strange attractors" because the system will tend towards the kinds of state described by the points in the phase space that lie within them.

The program then becomes that of applying the theory of nonlinear dynamic systems to Biology.

Inevitably, this implies that the processes that govern human development are the same that act on the simplest organisms (and even some nonliving systems). They are processes of emergent order and complexity, of how structure arises from the interaction of many independent units. The same processes recurr at every level, from morphology to behavior.

Darwin's vision of natural selection as a creator of order is probably not sufficient to explain all the spontaneous order exhibited by both living and dead matter. At every level of science (including the brain and life) the spontaneous emergence of order, or self-organization of complex systems, is a common theme.

Koestler and Salthe have shown how complexity entails hierarchical organization. Von Bertalanffi's general systems theory, Haken's synergetics, and Prigogine's non-equilibrium Thermodynamics belong to the class of mathematical disciplines that are trying to extend Physics to dynamic systems.

These theories have in common the fact that they deal with self-organization (how collections of parts can produce structures) and attempt at providing a unifying view of the universe at different levels of organization (from living organisms to physical systems to societies).

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