McCloskey Speaker Series – New Theories on the Origin of Life with Dr. Eric Smith | Tokyo
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Featuring Dr. Eric Smith, professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and the Santa Fe Institute. For most of the 20th century, complex biological views of evolution have been central to the way scientists think about the origin of life. But progress over the past 40 years in such fields as ocean exploration, microbiology, and planetary science has come together to suggest that life's origin may have been built on a core chemical blueprint. Dr. Smith argues that we need a new understanding of the nature of life, in which the dominant, Darwinian view of a “struggle for existence” comes second, and life at its core came about as a necessary layer of our maturing planet. Eric Smith began scientific work in high-energy physics, with Bachelor degrees in math and physics from Caltech, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1993. His work moved increasingly into topics in complex systems, during appointments in the University of Texas and the Los Alamos National Laboratories, culminating in eleven years spent at the Santa Fe Institute. At SFI he began parallel threads of work in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, economics and finance, and the history of human languages, and began studying the geochemistry, biochemistry, and evolution of the earliest life. He is currently a professor and Principle Investigator of the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo, and external professor at SFI. His goal is to understand the origin and nature of the living state through the many windows that science provides on it: the physical, geochemical, biochemical, ecological, and evolutionary.
Comments
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The most diplomatic dismissal of new age nonsense ("non-physical energies") I've ever heard at 51:03: "That's not a language I have the ability to use in any comfortable way..." 54:20 "energy is energy."
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Excellent lecture! Thankyou.
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Very Stunt ideas, research and discoveries about dinamic of life. In the path of those reflections, it will be a great challenge open minds e visions at the academic community and scholars people. I think, they are a second stage do understand the origin of life. Adcitional knowledge came from these perspective, give it a new horizon, when a quantum dinamics interact with that. Congratulations anda thanks Dr Eric Smith!
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In kindergarten fairy tales seem plausible. Then you start learning things like chilarity, the mallard reaction and information theory. By the time you're a biochemistry professor like me, you put away kindergarten wishful thinking and realize the possibility of life from non life is less than 1 in 10 to the million, optimistically. My specialty is single carbon metabolism, compounds that CANNOT be metabolized through the Krebs cycle. This man is fueled by a need to worship his god, not reason. See Biochemist Dean Kenyon who first published these ideas and has now totally abandoned them. None of this man's ideas are new and none have worked.
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Fantastic talk. Came to this via recommendation from James Tour's "The Origin of Life: An Inside Story"
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Any origin of life explanation has to account for the information in the DNA of the first cell. Merriam Webster on line features this dictionary definition of information: "the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something (as nucleotides in DNA or binary digits in a computer program) that produce specific effects."
Notice the seamless comparison of nucleotides in DNA to binary digits in a computer program. -
I mean, he will give rise to diverse species of theoretician proceeding on the basis of the non-random evolution of life! This does not deny natural elimination of maladaptive individuals and their specific genomes, (aka natural selection). However, taken with the new science of epigenetics, the mid-20th century developed Darwinian theories expounded by Dawkins need at the least careful qualification.
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This man is a Genus!
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Vladimir Matveev. The great basic question of science: Membrane compartment or non-membrane phase compartment is a physical basis for origin of life?
Oral presentation at The 2nd All-Russian Conference on Astrobiology. Moscow, Pushchino, 5-9 June 2016.
Video in English: https://youtu.be/Hn7A-1w0tuQ
Presentation slides in English as pdf:
http://www.bioparadigma.spb.ru/conf/Matveev-2016-The.great.basic.question.of.science_Eng_Slides.pdf
Comments for slides in English:
http://www.bioparadigma.spb.ru/conf/Matveev-2016-The.great.basic.question.of.science_Comments_Eng.pdf -
The hard empirical evidence of integrated DIPS (digital information processing systems) in even the most primitive prokaryotic cell allows for the inference to the best explanation of INTELLIGENCE as being the most rational origin of integrated DIPS.
This hypothesis wins out over all other competing hypotheses for the best explanation of this unique event in the distant past that has left very little by way of residual physical evidence. -
Chemicals cannot transition to life without information. Materialistic Evolution (random mutation) cannot explain Information. All Life requires information (DNA). Information only comes from Intelligence.
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Sencillamente excelente. Una presentación depurada, elegante , trabajada por mucho tiempo,cientifica , simplificada sin banalizar, con los detalles precisos para fundamentar e ilustrar , honesto en transparentar estructura y alcance argumental, fascinante por las implicancias . Gracias por subirlo a youtube.
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Brilliant talk. Off to see if there is any more by eric smith on the tubes.
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Fantastic and detailed talk!
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interesting talk. life as an environmental outcome..
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The most rational, parsimonious, and accurate representative - or remnant, if you will - of the origin of life on earth is to be found among primitive extant living cells.
These living organisms are defined as being alive largely due to their ability to process their digital genetic information via several different SYSTEMS, including storage, copying, transcribing, transmission, and decoding.
Our contemporary and uniform experience with SYSTEMS of digital information processing confirms INTELLIGENCE over UNGUIDED NATURAL PROCESSES as being the most rational origin of these SYSTEMS. -
Up to 3k! Way to go humanity!
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A wonderful talk!
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Just starting. If I hear any implications of magic I'm outa here.
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Would that more scientists were as empathic and courteous as this gentleman. With elegant dexterity he tells of a wonderful way of looking at what appears to be a friendly universe.