‘Purpose of Life’ is Part three of our ‘Life’ Series.
In this post, we discuss the Purpose of Life, or at least the ‘purposeful character‘ of Life. We recall that in our previous two posts in this “Life” series, we discussed Addy Pross’ new book, “What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology“, and how Life is strange. In the second post we also looked at Life’s organized complexity.
We also recall that Pross told us that Life’s design and diversity are just two of the characteristics of Life which make life special. He identified six characteristics of Life. We discussed the first of these six, organized complexity, in the second of the series. In this third post of the series, Purpose of Life, we will discuss Life’s purposeful character.
Purposeful Character of Life
In his book, Pross identified six characteristics of Life:
- organized complexity
- purposeful character
- dynamic character
- diversity
- far-from-equilibrium state
- chiral nature
In this post we examine the ‘purposeful character’ of Life.
Pross notes that a facet of Life that has been strikingly evident to humankind for thousands of years is its purposeful character. He calls this teleonomy.
Wikipedia defines Teleonomy as ‘the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms brought about by natural processes like natural selection‘.
Teleonomy should not be confused with Teleology in biology which is also defined by Wikipedia as ‘a purposeful goal-directedness brought about through human or divine intention’.
Pross explains that Teleonomy says that all living things behave as if they have an agenda, including single cells! He points out that the single cell bacterium is orders of magnitude greater in structural complexity and intricacy than a clock. Teleonomy is evident at the single-cell level of life as at the multicell level.
Problem?
The recognition that teleonomy is an undeniable and legitimate concept raises a problem. It means that:
- we believe in a material world,
- we no longer believe in a vital force,
- we now know living things are made up of the same ‘dead’ molecules as non-living ones.
So what is going on here, Pross asks?
Answer
Pross’ explanation in his book recognizes that ’emergent properties of complex systems’ will not suffice to explain this purposefulness of life. Such a response, he says, is little more than dressing up the discredited ‘Élan vital‘ concept in scientifically more acceptable attire.
Pross references Jacques Monod, (French biologist and Nobel Prize winner for his contributions to understanding of DNA replication and its role in protein synthesis) who was apparently confounded by this apparent paradox.
In the Wikipedia article on Jacques Monod (see above), it states that: ‘In 1970, Monod published Le hasard et la nécessité – English translation Chance and Necessity (1971) –, a book based on a series of lectures that he had given at Pomona College in 1969.[18] The book is a short but influential examination of the philosophical implications of modern biology, written for a general readership.’
In this book, Monod ‘summarized recent progress in several areas of biology, including his own research,’ he ‘highlights the ways in which information is found to take physical form and hence become capable of influencing events in the world.’ we recommend that you read this Wikipedia article on Monod.
Physicochemical Charaterization of Teleonomy
Pross proposes in Chapter 8 of his book a physicochemical charaterization of teleonomy.
He gives an example of how a purpose of a biological system may be specified. He quotes the example of simple cell, the prokaryotic (without nucleus) bacterium. Its teleonomic apparatus is directed towards one goal, cell division. In recognizing that fact for single-cell creatures, one can discern that in multi-cellular creatures that replicating drive is also immensely powerful.
Series will continue …
We shall continue to discuss Pross’s view of how life came about in subsequent episodes of our “Life” series of posts on the Seaswell Publishing Blog.
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(Post created: 18/02/2025)