Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Part 4 -- How Humanity Saved the Biosphere. The Crisis-of-the-Biopshere One-Previous to Its Present Crisis.








To My Readers,



Below is the fourth part of my multi-part re-rendition, in this blog, of a classic text, written by an anonymous collective author, one which -- very early-on, in the 1970s -- '''smelled a rat [smelled the 'Rocke-Nazi' rat, in my opinion, the biggest, rottenest rat in all of human [pre-]history to-date -- the most rabid, the most massively "ambitious" mass torturers, and mass murderers, in all of human history, who make the bloody Vlad The Impaler pale to an infinitesimal in comparison] in the "Global Warming", "People Are Pollution" rap''', and circulated, in <<samizdat>> fashion, a rather comprehensive warning to humanity about this new "eu"-genocidal, "humanocidal" ploy, until years later, when an updated version of this text became available on the world wide web.


Part four addresses the "Crisis of Nature" hypothesized, in the "Oparin/Haldane Heterotroph Hypothesis", of the origin of living cells on Earth, for a remote pre-human epoch of Earth's self-evolution.

Science -- both evidence and hypothesis -- has moved on from the "Heterotroph Hypothesis", since the time when this text was written.

I will make no attempt, in this re-rendering of this classic text, to update the science of this section.

The main value of this section is to document yet another crisis in -- pre-human -- Nature, and to further illustrate the point of the very title of this text:  humanity is not the cause of the present, biospheric "crisis of Nature", nor is the present biospheric crisis the only "crisis of Nature" in the history of Nature:  such crises, and the resulting self-revolutions, are inherent in the very nature of Nature's self-evolution.  Humanity is not the cause of the present crisis of Earth's biosphere, but human Nature -- human society -- is a product of pre-human Nature, and of exo-human Nature in general -- and, more recently, a product of its own work upon itself -- that has the potential to resolve the present [and future] "crisis of Nature".

That central premise has MORE THAN stood the test of the time since this text was written:  it has accrued additional evidence ever since! 


This text is entitled --

Crises by Nature:  How Humanity Saved the Biosphere   



For the Resumption of Humanity's Ascent, and, with it -- and by means of it -- the Regeneration of Our Planetary Biosphere,

M. Milankovitch












Crises by Nature
 How Humanity Saved The Biosphere

by
Capitalist Crisis Studies
[with modifications by M. Milankovitch]
Table of Contents









IV -- The Crisis-of-the-Biosphere of One-Previous to Its Present Crisis.



But the multicellular-organism dominated, photosynthetically-based biosphere which came to its crisis in the geologically latest epoch of the history of Earth-life, as we have seen, was, we suspect, itself the ‘solution’ to a much more ancient crisis, a crisis of the pre-multicellular, pre-photosynthetic biosphere, whose life, it is believed, was confined to the warm primeval ocean, and to exclusively unicellular forms.

According to the currently hegemonic ‘Heterotroph Hypothesis’ c38, this, the original form of the biosphere, was based not on respiration as today for both higher plants and ‘higher animals’, a mode of metabolism requiring the ‘breathing’ of oxygen, nor on photosynthesis, a form of synthesis of organic “food” molecules requiring the ‘breathing’ of CO2, but rather on fermentation, an anaerobic and much less energy-efficient metabolic ‘technology’. 

Large organic molecules which represent “food” — biological free energy or negentropy sources — for respiratory metabolism, such as acetic acid (vinegars) and alcohols, represent excreta — waste [bio-entropy], or poison — for fermenting organisms. 

These molecules could become metabolizeable only after free gaseous oxygen (O2) was released into the atmosphere by photosynthesizing plants.

 
The synthesis of the organic molecules needed to feed the fermentation of the slowly swelling bloom of unicellular organisms populating the hypothesized early ocean was accomplished, not of course by photosynthesizing plants, which had yet to evolve, but instead by the primitive, oxygenless atmosphere itself. 

We could call this process ‘atmo-photo-synthesis’ or ‘atmo-thermo-synthesis’, or just ‘atmo-synthesis’ for short. 

Through processes driven by molecular energy input derived ultimately from the sun’s light, and perhaps also from the self-heating of the early Earth owing to nuclear decay of the heavier, radioactively unstable, atoms contained in its mass, the gaseous methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water (vapor) hypothesized to have been the main constituents of the early atmosphere combined into larger proto-proteinoid and ‘carbohydrateous’ molecules which precipitated out into the ocean because of their weight -- wherein the warm brothy solution accumulated in this way promoted further molecule-building and molecule-expanding reactions.




Out of the non-living cell-like colloidal structures known to be formed spontaneously by sufficiently rich concentrations of these macro-molecules — structures called “coacervates” and “microspheres” — the early unicellular organisms are thought to have developed. 


Once vitalized, these structures would systematically turn back upon the same molecular building blocks out of which they had constructed themselves, and feed, gobbling them up to stoke the slow, biological combustion of their fermentation metabolism, which breaks apart such organic molecules, thereby releasing to cellular appropriation the solar-derived and heat-derived chemical binding energy that had held those molecules together before they were gobbled up and "fermented" inside those incipiently living cells. 

It is especially the molecular reactions of “autocatalytic” and “reflexive catalytic” type, in conjunction with other “circular” chemical operations, that are thought responsible for the eventual vitalization of the spontaneous, originally merely mechanically cell-like colloidal formations. c39 


Such chemical reactions, of a “highly nonlinear”, “nonequilibrium” sort, give rise to “coherent” and “self-oscillatory” steady-states; to “dissipative”, locally negentropic, “spatio-temporally ordered” structures and behaviors of a kind believed essential to the phenomenologies which we recognize as “life”; as “living”. c40

 
Present-day plants are called “autotrophs”, which means, roughly, “self-feeders”. 

The term “heterotroph”, on the contrary, refers to organisms drawing their nourishment from sources “other-than-self”, external to self. 

The latter term is applied, therefore, to present-day animals, and to the hypothesized primitive cells, dependent for their food on ‘atmosynthesis’.

Hence the name “Heterotroph Hypothesis” given to this model of the origin of the biosphere.

 
As theae processes of the primitive biosphere proceeded, the waste products of fermentation — ‘heterotrophic entropy’ — must have accumulated in the primeval seas as a growing reservoir of “toxic pollution” relative to the merely fermentative ‘metabolic technology’ of primitive unicellular life, threatening to poison the mounting swarms of heterotrophs populating that sea in much the way today’s fermenting bacteria and yeast, remote descendants of those primeval heterotrophs — die in their own alcoholic excretions in the process of winemaking. 

Furthermore, the demand for organic molecules constituted by this mounting population probably eventually outstripped the supply capabilities of a non-increasing, or perhaps declining, rate of atmosynthesis, thus leading to a relative depletion of food sources, a worsening scarcity of metabolizeable organic matter. 

Oparin, co-originator of the Heterotroph Hypothesis, describes the resulting crisis of the ‘Heterotrophic Biosphere’ in the following passage --
“The  primitive metabolism of energy was entirely anerobic [M.M.: anaerobic, "oxygenless"], and depended on the interaction of organic substances with molecules of water.  But the supply of organic substance which could undergo fermentation must have been, therefore, decreasing in the primitive hydrosphere, being replaced by fermentation products such as carbon dioxide, alcohol, lactic and butyric acid, etc.  Sooner or later this process must have come to a natural end with the complete exhaustion of organic nutrient material and the death of all living things.  That this did not actually happen is due to the fact that some micro-organisms had acquired the ability to utilize light energy by virtue of their pigmentation.” c41


At least one lineage of the primitive organisms, under this mounting constraint, began to internalize the process of atmospheric synthesis of organic molecules. 

Evolution in the direction of internal synthesis is thought to have proceeded gradually, as a step by step ‘recapitulation in reverse’. 

In other words, whereas atmosynthesis began with simple molecules — H2, NH4, CH4 and H2O — and built complex ones, the evolution of internal synthesis would begin with the synthesis of rather complex molecules, and move back toward synthesis of the simpler ones as it proceeded.  

Ability to synthesize the scarcest of the common big food molecules (call it A) by internal transformation of several less scarce but less readily ‘etable’ molecules (call these B, C, and D) would develop first. 

But the resulting rise in consumption of, B, C, & D would eventually render them too, in turn, scarce, putting a survival-premium on development of the ability to synthesize them from other, perhaps even less ‘etable’ molecules,  and so on. 


Development of pigments, such as today’s chlorophyll, allowing the use of photons — i.e., of the same solar energy source which drove the atmospheric synthesis process — would complete the internalization of ‘atmosynthesis’.  

The ‘autotroph’ represents an internalization, or ‘folding-in’, of the whole previous environment of atmosynthesis, in the same way that the primitive heterotrophs represented a concentrated ‘tucking-in’ -- ‘in’ to little colloidal pouches, known as “cells” — of the chemical ferment of the primitive ocean environment, a ferment originally spread throughout its vast volume. 

The primitive ocean as a whole was thus the first great ‘cell’, just as the whole primeval atmosphere was the de facto first great ‘plant’, or chloroplast.




The more perfected forms of ‘photo(n)-synthesis’ involve the release of free gaseous oxygen, O2, as exhaust. 

Photosynthetically-produced free oxygen, bubbling up out of the ooze of the primitive seas and, much later, venting out of the stomatic ‘pores’ of land plants, transformed the chemical nature of the atmosphere, from a “reducing” (electron-giving) quality, to the opposite, “oxidizing” (electron-grabbing) quality, finally putting a stop to "atmosynthesis". 

Oxygen stopped atmosynthesis by disrupting the chemical reactions on which atmosynthesis depends, and also by forming an ozone (O3-) layer in the upper atmosphere, shutting out much of the ultraviolet photon flux that had, in part, driven atmosynthesis.


But this screening of the harsh ultraviolet rays also facilitated the eventual invasion of the exposed land surfaces by biological organisms. 

More important, the pervasive availability of, atmospheric, free oxygen allowed the metabolism of fermentation to be upgraded into the much more bio-energy-profitable, “aerobic” or oxygen-consuming metabolism of respiration.

Also, once respiration came into play, the formidable oceanic accumulations of ‘heterotrophic pollution’ — ‘waste’ or ‘entropy’ for fermentative life — alcohols, lactic and butyric acids, etc. — could be mined as food; could become biological “free energy”, or ‘material negentropy’ for respirative life --
“In the absence of free oxygen all these substances are entirely unavailable for the animals of that epoch, but with the advent of oxygen the possibility of their utilization as sources of energy has been realized.” c42
 

Thus photosynthesis ‘solved’ the fundamental contradiction, and the "crisis of Nature", of the heterotrophic biosphere; its self-discontinuing self-continuity. 

That is, photosynthesis was the ‘form of continuum’ of that otherwise terminal -- self-terminating; self-dis-continuing — biosphere; the form in which a continuity of that biosphere, beyond the heterotrophic limit, was possible.


Though we cannot speak with certainty, in direct homology with the form of the photosynthetic limit, of a ‘tendency of the rate of atmosynthesis to fall’, we can speak of, a ‘fermentation crisis’, and of a ‘tendency of the rate of fermentation to fall’.


Photosynthesis became the basis of a tremendous expansion in the energy available to sustain and advance the living process, and thus of a tremendous self-growth of the biosphere itself. 


The photosynthetic activity of biological agents re-made the atmosphere, the entire biosphere, the rocky face of the Earth itself. 

The ‘ozonic’, atmospheric and other geologic consequences of photosynthesis opened the land to life for the first time, bringing the continental surfaces too — the outer surfaces of the lithosphere, as well as the hydrosphere — under the biospheric blanket of life. 


We have already explored main features of the ‘shape’ of this photosynthetic continuum, with its coming to a head in the Carboniferous, its sub-peak in the Cretaceous and its icy texture in the epoch just behind our own.


I think we can begin to discern a pattern, common to both the photosynthetic and "atmosynthetic" continua. 

In both instances, it is the accumulation of a relative entropy in the extension of the central reproduction process which ultimately spells the end of that particular reproduction-process. 

And the entropy accumulation of the previous mode of reproduction forms part of the essential resource base, the “free energy” or “negentropy” of the superseding one: the ‘launching-pad’ from which it leaps; which gives it its ‘head-start’. 

The smoldering ash in the bowl of the torch of life leaps into flame again as it passes to new hands. 


With each such passage, the "crisis of Nature" is resolved by an expansion in energy-appropriation and, if you will, in an expansion of the self-appropriation of Nature. 

A wider sphere of Nature is drawn into denser self-connection, integrated into the web of ecologic inter-relationship. 

A higher, more inclusive and more intensive self-organization and interconnection of Nature is born. 


Yet each of these ‘solutions’ or levels of relationship (interconnection) is inherently unstable — is both continually and ultimately self-attacking, and self-dis-solving in the long run — because each such “solution” is founded upon a relatively finite constituent of nature, its ‘epoch-specific’ form of relative negentropy, which the core life process of that “solution” consumes and gradually “depletes”, i.e., converts into something else, something that may be a relative entropy for that core life-process [though it may be a form of negentropy relative to the next-emergent, higher core life-process].




We might take note at this point that the human supersession of photosynthesis — shall we call it ‘petroleosynthesis’? — is now approaching its limit:  the depletive exhaustion of the fossil fuels.

Fusion power — the human-societal ‘internalization’ of the Sun itself, of the core self-reproduction process of the Sun, and of other stars, of stars in general, namely, as the pre-human-natural form of fusion power, known as “stellar nucleosynthesis”, which [temporarily] sustains the stars against self-gravitational collapse -- looks like the form in which the new continuum can be founded. c43

 

Can we frame any hypothesis given these three successive instances, as to the general law of Nature's self-evolution, crisis, and self-revolution; of planetary, ecologic, biospheric self-development in particular — i.e., as to the general ‘geometry’ of natural continuum in general, of ecological continuum in particular?

Do we locate in this pattern a “Dialectic”; a “Dialectic of Nature”?








TO BE CONTINUED.





 NEXT:  
  


Part 5 --  The Laws of the Time Conntinuum 

[The Necessity of Evolution].







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