Natural — or Organic — Selection — or Creation — in Evolution.

The accepted theory about evolution in biology is talking about random mutations and natural selection as the motor of changes in species, but I think this is a restrictive view.

First consider the situation when no life exists, then there is just a process of materialistic changes dictated by the so-called laws of physics and chemical actions in time. The model I use to describe this process is the dynamic interval-moment model of a set of states of the universe totally ordered by Time with on each state pre-things present in a moment connected by correspondences between states yielding strings of momentary pre-things over intervals in time. Existing things evolve from non-existing pre-things as strings over suitable time intervals called ‘existence intervals’. All detail about this model are in my book “Time Hybrids” appearing in Nova Science Publishers soon. One does not talk about natural selection in that situation because we think we have a suitable theory, in physics and chemistry, to describe the material world — not correctly — but satisfactory for now.

Now some single cells with DNA appear on the scene: bacteria, archaea, and also viruses perhaps only fitting another definition of Life but let us neglect that here. The cells clone themselves by replication of the DNA, in principle no natural selection here, but the replication may have errors! The topoisomerase enzymes cutting and gluing the DNA double helix are not infallible, and when they fail some mutation is said to have happened. The first question is: “was it really a failure?” If there were not such failures nothing would change, the cells would procreate infinitely (almost)and life would be a series of identical clones of single cells. Yes, some would die in a hostile environment but that would not change anything in the perfect cloning system that would not have any flexibility. So mutations are needed to obtain an opportunistic enabling system where DNA changes and flexibility arises as by accident allowing adaption to external factors. Yet in the DIM model everything has an intrinsic reason because momentary ‘pre-things without history’ in the universe appear at some moments — those are pre-things not fitting in a string starting before the moment they appear — and every existing thing being a string of pre-things must then start at some pre-things without history, which I will call creative pre-things.

The existence of creative pre-things make the ‘evolution’ of reality undetermined even if everything has an intrinsic reason, thus without pure coincidence being present. The reason — or cause — is however in non-existing moments and thus non-existing pre-things, defining the non-existing part of reality. So, some thing “being” real are not existing, that is a consequence of the definition of existing as being in some non-trivial time interval!

Every living organism is thus ‘co-creating’ reality by starting actions in reality by some creative pre-thing in some moment (of zero time); in my book I use this to explain ‘free will’ in our cognitive abstract world we created. It follows from all the above that the universe is one of continuous creation and all living things are taking part in that via pre-interactions and transforming matter and ‘energy’ in ‘living energy’.

Now advanced life forms, for example humans, are symbiotic systems of cells, even with very different DNA, like stem cells, gut bacteria, fungi, neurons, … , so what we call the human species is a composite of different species! People are unaware of all the essential activities of cells, bacteria and all components of their system. All of these components are evolving and perform(unaware of course) creative pre-interactions dealing with the common task of making the global organism grow and develop. Cells creating pre-interactions without history is the essence of Life and that is unrelated to mutations — in fact, it will create mutations — and also to natural selection if one can define that even in the situation of most primitive life forms. Cells organize the splitting of the DNA, that is sure, and a possible mistake by the topoisomerases has an intrinsic reason in some momentary creative pre-interaction. A cell has no brain, it does not plan anything, yet it is responsible for the creative pre-interaction? If it is not responsible then one has to invent some Being out of time acting in moments and in all organisms, but let me not go to some ‘Deus ex Machina’ here.

Darwin described the evolution of species separating them by traits but viewed in the evolution of the universe: I am stardust floating through space until it is in some ocean spouting out of some black smoker forming chemical blobs turning into living cells by some magic and then a multicell and some sea-organism, some eel-like thing, some fish-like thing, some amphibious thing, some reptile thing, some mammal thing, some ape-like thing and finally a human. So my “picture” in the finished universe out of time is containing many different species as we define them after Darwin, if we would meet some of our more primitive representatives we could certainly not mate with them, they are really different biological species. Yet the only difference between the eel-me and the human-me in the finished universe is the moment at which we look at ‘me’. All those fore-parents are ‘me’.

Evolution of Life is a global one ,all components are interacting. Also in biotopes living things interact with the surrounding material world and there is mutual influences. These influences are concrete in reality, there are pre-interactions between strings belonging to a living organism and strings belonging to matter in the neighbourhood, those pre-interactions have influence on the nature of the realized existing things from these strings of pre-things later! A macro-example can be seen in the changes in the nature of Yellowstone park after the reintroduction of wolves in the landscape. Everything happening follows from interactions, planned or not, and interactions are ‘two-sided’ and not just an action of one on the other in any order. I proposed as a definition of a living thing the property of being ‘able’ to start creative pre-interactions leading to actions in reality (then viruses would be alive even without metabolic system). Objects in the material universe do not create pre-interactions without history, they must follow the laws of physics which leads to predestined ‘behaviour’!

Viewing evolution as a global phenomenon also views mutations as a more global action. Indeed if we observe how species evolved we see traits in common for several species, e.g. all, primates, even all mammals , even reptiles and fish, only have two eyes and one head. mutations which would lead to four eyes, two extra ones in the back of the head, would be selected as an advantage because you could see predators coming at you from behind, yet it never happened. Mutations seem only to produce limited changes, you could say, infinitesimal ones and are similar over many species, to me that proves the global structure of evolution.

Can we say there is an aim in evolution? I guess we can, but as follows. Realizing that time — as a passing by duration — is only our observed notion of change but in reality is only the total order of the states of the universe, we should look at organisms in the finished universe out of time (but only ordered by it as a book with ordered pages).That yields a very entangled picture of the history of the universe and all species in it, some of the material in me appears in other beings and Incan see the thread of some fly temporally connect with mine in the maggots in my corpse after I die. But the final picture of my thread throughout the history of the universe is the aim of what I was and will be, my conscience and cognitive actions being traceable in my interactions with reality when I was alive and these depend completely on my whole historic evolving over all time. As a species we can distinguish the evolution of common features getting more and more complex over time. If we go extinct that would be a pity because then our characteristic properties have not made it into the final picture as an enduring process of development. If we do survive as a species, our final form may be very different from us — like we are now with respect to the eel-like thing we once were — try to imagine some semi-transcendent being of some angelic nature! That final being is then our aim for evolution. If we survive it will be there to enter eternity out of time (and I do not use any paranormal ideas about heaven here!), without us rather primitive humans — behaving good enough — that final being will not realize, so we have to act “smart” to survive. I must admit that the recent actions of humanity seem to be going the wrong way but there is still time to turnaround, not by some governmental decisions but by a deep change of attitude of people towards the essential human values we still have to discover! In conclusion: I would accept this as an aim for our evolution and our actual level of science allows to steer evolution a little but perhaps just enough to sail out of the danger zone.

Hence viewed from the global evolution of Life there is no tree of evolution, there is a forest with connected trees and from the finished universe point of view the two-side interaction between biotope and organism is one of adaption to changes via organic — there is no natural selection if there are no organisms — selection, where organic also refers to the organic universe defined by the material universe and all pre-interactions in reality reacting to all pre-interactions with organism strings. This is much more complex than natural selection as defined in modern biology! The creational aspect, for example in mutations with their intrinsic (even non-existing!) reason in reality, has been explained before. Thus the title of this text can now be changed into: ‘organic selection and creation in evolution’.