The life is sustained on the Earth by evolution. We see how evolution works, and we see how evolution is implemented to preserve life. Th...
The life is sustained on the Earth by evolution. We see how evolution works, and we see how evolution is implemented to preserve life. The key element of the process is the DNA, its information the plan, and its copy and translation mechanism. The DNA has all the information that is necessary to reproduce the cell. The DNA additionally needs machinery to read the code and construct the parts including itself in the replication. An important aspect of that process is that the operation has no built-in, direct modification tool of the information contained in the DNA. The change of that information is assigned to the evolution and its randomness.
The plan, contained in the DNA (and also sometimes in the RNA), appeared in the early stages of life. We see it as essential, but we should marvel at this fact. Implementing a stored plan and building a system according to that stored plan in the process of the copy is not the only or even easiest realization of the reproduction.
The DNA is not just for the reproduction of the cell. It is also participating in the regulation of the cell operation. At very early stages, at the primitive state of life, however, the regulatory functions of the DNA most likely were not significant. Most likely the DNA was not even present in the earliest machinery. The RNA was the participating agent in the cell's life. RNA is not just to carry information, but it has catalytic properties too. It can actively cooperate in the chemical reactions. In the earliest stages of life, probably this participation in the reactions was the RNA's only function.
Life on the Earth is based on reproduction. Even if life could exist without reproduction, implementing reproduction is a natural and maybe the only way to sustain life in a hostile environment. With reproduction, the system can survive if some members of the system stop functioning, yet others still reproduce.
The simplest way to reproduce a complex system is not the way to use a plan for building a new identity. The plan requires a lot of background and complex functions of storing, reading, and a complex language of interpreting the information. The simplest way to reproduce a system is to let grow, and if the system is big enough, split into two instances. It does not require any recorded information. Reproduction does not require a plan.
For example, let see how we can build a house. The regular way is to create a plan, buy the materials and organize it according to the plan. The other method requires no plan. It is enough if there is another house to use it as a template. Go to the other house, examine how it is structured, buy the necessary materials, and build the same new one. The plan is the other house itself. Without the plan, the process is much simpler. We do not need to create a specific language to model the house and create storage to secure the information and create implementing machinery by reading and applying the information for building the house.
The earliest living systems used RNA in their molecular machinery, and it is our luck. Otherwise, we could not be here. As it was mentioned, RNA molecules are participating agents in the reactions. However, RNA is capable of doing more than that, capable of storing information with its semi-periodic structure. The information storage probably was not its function in the early stages, but as a side effect, it was present. Most likely, in early life, recording the information of the structure was not an active property of the system. It is too complex. It is overly difficult to implement. The machinery of the grow-and-split mechanism is much easier because it requires no information handling processes. Still, evolution, as it is an adaptation mechanism to the changing environment built on random changes could flourish on the grow-and-split kind of reproduction. Life can adapt to the changing environment by the grow-and-split type of reproduction because it allows changes even more freely than if the reproduction would use recorded information. Life would be safely protected by the evolution of the grow-and-split method.
However, somehow it happened. Somehow a language created, information built on that language, stored in the RNA, and later in the more capable DNA. Additionally, an information implementing mechanism and machinery is created as well to build the necessary materials and the whole structure according to that information. All of these are unnecessary elements of the grow-and-split kind of reproduction. However, there is an important advantage of the stored information method. It is crucial for reaching more complexity. Difficult to create growing complexity with the grow-and-split kind of reproduction. It is good and simple for reproduction, but information recording, storage, and implementation are absolutely necessary to create more complexity. Unnecessary for reproduction, but required for complexity to grow. Make it clear: increasing complexity is not needed to sustain life, it is necessary only to create growing complexity, which is not a must-have-property of life.
Reproduction built on stored information, however, created a marvelous transformation of life. This transformation is even more critical for building the multi-cellular life, where a new dimension of complexity required and appeared. This growing complexity let ourselves to develop also. The development of the plan and the build around machinery made it possible for us to exist.
We may call the stored information method for reproduction as the master plan. It is an unenforced, unrequited addition to life. This addition was necessary for creating growing complexity, and ultimately for consciousness to appear. We are able to recognize the existing universe just because of this unnecessary and unrequited addition. We must marvel at that.
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