Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
Q: What is the purpose of human life? Why do we see so much suffering in various forms of life?
Krishna: Let me answer this question from a scientific point of view.
Origin of life : art work by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa; Source: http://www.kkartfromscience.com
According to some physicists, the origin of life is an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics. Their equations suggest that under certain conditions, groups of atoms will naturally restructure themselves so as to burn more and more energy, facilitating the incessant dispersal of energy and the rise of “entropy” or disorder in the universe. This restructuring effect, which they call dissipation-driven adaptation, fosters the growth of complex structures, including living things. The existence of life is no mystery or lucky break but rather follows from general physical principles and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.” (1,2,3)
All organisms are composed of molecules that assemble together via numerous chemical reactions. Just as heat flows from hot to cold, these molecules obey the universal tendency to diminish energy differences, so that the most likely chemical reactions are those in which energy flows “downhill” toward a stationary state, or chemical equilibrium.
The second law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of motion, reveals that elemental abiotic matter evolves from the equilibrium via chemical reactions that couple to external energy towards complex biotic non-equilibrium systems. Each time a new mechanism of energy transduction emerges, e.g., by random variation in syntheses, evolution prompts by punctuation and settles to a stasis when the accessed free energy has been consumed. The evolutionary course towards an increasingly larger energy transduction system accumulates a diversity of energy transduction mechanisms, i.e. species. The rate of entropy increase is identified as the fitness criterion among the diverse mechanisms, which places the theory of evolution by natural selection on the fundamental thermodynamic principle with no demarcation line between inanimate and animate. (4)
Processes of life are, in their principles, no different from any other natural processes.
There is a primordial pool that contained some basic compounds. By reacting with one another and coupling with an external energy source such as the Sun, the compounds formed a chemical system. The compounds continually engaged in chemical reactions, thriving the most when capturing and distributing more and more of the Sun’s energy in the quest for a steady state. The evolutionary process was and still is non-deterministic, even chaotic, since the energy flows create energy differences that in turn affect the flows.
Due to random variations stemming from the chemical reactions, some novel compounds may have emerged in the primordial system. Some of these compounds (such as those involving carbon) might have been exceptionally good at creating energy flow, enabling the system to diminish energy differences very efficiently and reach a higher level of entropy. Compounds with these advantages would have gained ground during this period of primitive chemical evolution.
The physical tendency to diminish energy differences makes no distinction between systems that are inanimate or animate. The order and complexity that characterize modern biological systems have no value in and of themselves, but structure and hierarchical organization emerged and developed because they provided paths for increasing energy flows.
The scientists give several examples of mechanisms associated with life that increase entropy. For instance, when systems (e.g. molecules) become entities of larger systems (e.g. cells) that participate in larger ranges of interactions to consume more free energy, entropy increases. Genetic code might have served as another primordial mechanism, acting as a catalyst that could increase energy flow toward greater entropy. Today, complex organisms have cellular metabolism, which is another mechanism that increases entropy, as it disperses energy throughout the organism and into the environment. The food chain in an ecosystem is another example of a mechanism for transferring energy on a larger scale.
In this sense, life is a very natural thing, which emerged simply to satisfy basic physical laws. Our “purpose,” so to speak, is to redistribute energy on the Earth, which is in between a huge potential energy difference caused by the hot Sun and cold space. Organisms evolve via natural selection, but at the most basic level, natural selection is driven by the same thermodynamic principle: increasing entropy and decreasing energy differences. The natural processes from which life emerged, then, are the same processes that keep life going – and they operate on all timescales.
According to thermodynamics, there was no striking moment or no single specific locus for life to originate, but the natural process has been advancing by a long sequence of steps via numerous mechanisms so far reaching a specific meaning – life (4)
In all likelihood, life on Earth began in water, perhaps in a tide pool that was cut off from seawater at low tide but flooded by waves at high tide. Over billions of years, complex molecules like DNA, RNA and proteins formed in this setting before, ultimately, the first cells emerged.
RNA is a fascinating molecule. "It can store information and also catalyze biochemical reactions." Scientists therefore think that RNA must have been the first of all complex molecules to form. Active RNA molecules are composed of hundreds or even thousands of bases and are very unstable. When immersed in water, RNA strands quickly break down into their constituent parts—a process known as hydrolysis. So, how could RNA have survived in the primordial soup?
Adding short strands of pre-formed RNA to RNA strands in the soup. The free complementary bases quickly joined with this RNA in a process called hybridization. Double strands of three to five base pairs in length formed and remains stable for several hours.
The exciting part is that double strands lead to RNA folding, which can make the RNA catalytically active. RNA molecules can also form protocells. If the borders of these protocells are composed of double-stranded DNA, the cells become more stable.(5)
Whatever actions and reactions occurred in the initial stages of Earth formation and evolution lead to life.
The culmination of evolution leads to human beings. As we have a very evolved brain, we can achieve several things if we use it correctly and efficiently and make life on Earth very comfortable, pleasurable and meaningful at the same time.
But right now most human beings are not using this evolved brain very efficiently and correctly . That is why this suffering.
All life forms share at least one essential purpose: survival. This is even more important than another key purpose for life, reproduction. Plenty of organisms, after all, are alive but do not reproduce. To be alive is more than passing genes along to the next generation. To be alive is to want to remain alive. This is an essential difference between living creatures and other complex but non-living forms of material organization such as stars or rocks. These non-living material forms simply exist. They passively undergo the unfolding of the physical processes that shape them. For rocks, this is a give-and-take with erosion; for stars, it is about countering gravitational implosion while there is enough nuclear fuel to fuse in their cores. There is no strategy to any of this, and no action can be taken to delay what is inevitable.
The essential difference between the living and the non-living is the urge for preservation. Life is a form of material organization that strives to perpetuate itself. Life has autonomous intentionality.
The question of whether life has a purpose becomes confusing when we consider the stunning diversity of living forms on this planet. There is no controversy in saying that a single organism wants to remain alive.
Once that purpose is served, you can think as many as other ones your brain allows!
Nervous system has a purpose.
Nervous system’s main function is to send messages from various parts of your body to your brain, and from your brain back out to your body to tell your body what to do. These messages regulate your: thoughts, memory, learning and feelings, movements (balance and coordination), senses (how your brain interprets what you see, hear, taste, touch and feel), wound healing, sleep, heartbeat and breathing patterns, response to stressful situations, including sweat production, digestion, body processes, such as puberty and aging.
When something goes wrong in your body, you feel it as pain. When our pain receptors are working effectively, pain is a useful way for our bodies to tell our brains when a stimulus is a threat to our overall well-being. However, sometimes pain stops playing a protective role. Chronic pain can occur when a medical professional is unable to effectively treat the underlying condition causing the pain, but it can also happen when there isn’t an underlying disease at all. At that point, pain ceases to be an effective indicator that something is wrong with the body and becomes a disease unto itself.
Physical pain is a necessary evil. Free nerve endings on your skin are stimulated and quickly send information to your brain prompting a normal reaction which is to withdraw from the stimulus and protect/nurse that part of their body until it heals.
Whilst inconvenient and annoying, pain just like most other things we deem negative in life have a necessary role to play in the grand scheme of things. Things are often more complimentary than contradictory however contradictory they may seem on the surface.
So rather than use a black/white approach to see pain as solely negative, it may be more effective to ask questions like why in a bid to understand the deeper significance of why nature is designed the way it is.
This applies to physical, emotional or mental pain. They all call for your attention to a problem. The solution is often found in the problem. Understanding them may be to your advantage.
Can you actually go through life without labeling what happens to you as good or bad? Yes, you can. You have to train yourself to do this. You have been conditioned to think of things as bad or good. You can de-condition yourself.
Think of your pain and suffering as being hit by two arrows. The first arrow, the inevitable pain of life, whether a difficult event, thought or feeling, is shot at us; we have little control over this. But then we shoot a second arrow at ourselves with our own reaction to the pain, amplifying and prolonging it. The suffering from the refusal or pushing away of this pain, the "it shouldn’t be here," the "I can’t stand this," but also the blaming, the ruminating, the "why me?" the "it’s always been this way and always going to be this way" stories: these are the parts we add. To put it simply: pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
Yes, you can minimize your suffering.
Let me tell you how I do this whether it is physical or emotional pain. I tell myself there is no pain, and even if there is some feeling, I tell myself, I can bear it. It is okay to bear a little pain that came as a collateral damage in the big scheme of significant things. "This physical pain is telling me to take action and minimize the damage and it is inevitable in the processes of avoiding harm and healing. So it isn't bad." That makes me feel the pain less or makes it bearable without taking any actual 'pain killers'. This analysis itself is a pain suppresser.
Then emotional pain. I know this hurts more than physical pain. However, if you can analyse things very critically, it removes the emotional disturbance to a large extent. Then immerse yourself in doing things you really love. Things that make you happy and feel satisfied. Your pain and suffering magically disappears.
That 's my own experience.
There isn't any pain that isn't manageable. There is no need to suffer to the extent people imagine.
You have a very evolved brain. It can reveal both the purpose of your life and alleviate your suffering.
Citations:
1. https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-o...
2. http://www.pnas.org/content/114/29/7565.abstract
3. https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-computational-foundation-of-life...
4. Annila, Arto and Annila, Erkki. “Why did life emerge?” International Journal of Astrobiology 7 (3 & 4 ): 293-300 (2008).
5. Christine M. E. Kriebisch et al, Template-based copying in chemically fuelled dynamic combinatorial libraries, Nature Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-024-01570-5
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