Читать книгу Co-evolution of consciousness and operating systems (Коэволюция сознания и операционных систем) - Ярослав Вячеславович Богданов - Страница 4

As far as I’ve heard, defining life is considered bad form among biologists -something along the lines of, "Don’t act like a know-it-all." But I was about seventeen, my father was a biologist, and I had spent half my childhood in the biology department. Moreover, I was going through a phase in life that sometimes ends in "philosophical intoxication," which, thankfully, didn’t happen to me. “The old catamnesis,” as they say, revealed that I simply remained a curious person striving to form a more or less coherent understanding of the world around me.

"Life is a system of chemical reactions ordered in time and space."So, as a high school student, I came up with the following definition of life: "Life is a system of ordered chemical reactions." Later, I refined it slightly:

This clarified not only the directionality of chemical processes in the biological environment but also encompassed all those organelles, membranes, compartments, mitoses, meioses, and so on, which are sustained by this orderliness. In my view, this meant that the system is open, and its orderliness leads to the system’s self-maintenance. I understood "orderliness" in the spirit of thermodynamic systems' concepts of order [16].

Why specifically chemical reactions? Because, in my view, life originated through chemical reactions.

It very accurately reflects the essence of the life we know on planet Earth and, of course, incorporates the idea of the orderliness of chemical reactions. Enzymatic systems are systems of biochemical catalysis, and the term "hierarchy" directly points to orderliness.I also liked another definition of life, given by Professor V.R. Bogdanov: "Life is a hierarchy of enzymatic systems."

My definition is more general; it implies the possibility of other forms of life we do not yet know about – life built on different biochemical principles, not based on nucleic acids or proteins, whose primary quality is the orderliness of chemical reactions.

The formula of orderliness in chemical processes led me to think about what each subsequent form of matter movement represents in relation to the previous one. It is the ordering of a new quality of substance that has emerged. Chemical reactions made the existence of molecules possible, vastly increased the combinations of elementary particles and atoms, and reduced the energy costs of these processes. While the number of chemical elements generated by the physical form of matter movement is measured in dozens, the number of chemical compounds, even in inert matter, is measured in hundreds and thousands – not to mention organic, biological, and man-made chemistry.

This aromorphosis – the process where not the entire atom but its electron clouds enter into reactions – produced chemical reactions under suitable conditions at an appropriate stage in the expansion of the universe, leading to the ordering of physical processes in time and space.

Just as carbon chemistry is the key process for life, the emergence of atoms with electron clouds was the key process for chemistry. This represents the new order of physical interactions that gave rise to chemical reactions. Out of a vast number of elementary particles and their combinations, atoms became the "carbon" for chemistry – they ignited the fire of chemical reactions.

I previously identified weaknesses in my definitions, but I liked them nonetheless because they personally helped me understand the evolution of matter – from physical forms to biological ones, and eventually to intelligent and superintelligent forms. Later, I delved into specifics. I reflected on physical reactions and viruses – whether they are alive or not. I concluded that their life is facultative; they are dualistic in nature and cannot be considered independently of cells, as, outside of cells, life does not exist. For practical reasons, we often consider viruses to be alive. However, in reality, viruses do not live outside of cells. One could say they are genomes outside of cells that, under suitable conditions, modify the genomes of bacterial or multicellular organisms and compete with them for cellular organization. The goal of this competition is to win the vertical race for the transmission of genetic information.

A virus is a parasitic genome. It is not alive, just as any genome outside of a cell is not alive. As a result of evolution, some genomes learned to persist outside of cells. This is a degenerative pathway of life and likely the first degeneration to occur in the living world. Viruses did not produce the diversity we later saw in multicellular organisms, but they are still alive to this day! They are more alive than the living and often outcompete living organisms, as evidenced by the recent coronavirus pandemic. These companions of life are not outsiders; their strategies are highly successful, and they are indestructible as long as life exists.

It is clear that for life – for this chemical factory – a compartment is necessary, whether it be a coacervate droplet, a bacterium, a cyanobacterium, or some other simple organism. The orderliness of this factory is such that the chemical processes within it sustain themselves, and entropy is minimal or approaches zero. For example, the orderliness of chemical transformations at a pharmaceutical factory is also significant, but that does not make the factory alive – the chemical processes there cannot sustain themselves. Without the participation of technologies created by intelligence, the factory cannot live or reproduce. The moment the technological process halts, everything reverts to an inert, chaotic process with increasing entropy.

Later, I became intrigued by questions such as: How did eukaryotes evolve from bacteria and cyanobacteria? Is the eukaryotic cell essentially the simplest two-celled organism with two distinct genomes – the first chimera? Was it the first parasite turned symbiont, and why did such cells gain the potential to eventually give rise to multicellular organisms? And what are multicellular organisms, really? Where do we begin? With flagellated Volvox? With sponges? With the freshwater polyp Hydra? With worms? Clearly, there were intermediate forms, some of which are still known to us today. However, it’s not a fact that these currently existing intermediate forms represent the transitional stages on the path of aromorphosis. Perhaps these are newly emerged cellular associations that appeared in the more recent past.

To me, one thing was clear: multicellularity begins with the differentiation of cells. It is precisely at this point that the simplest multicellular organism emerges. From there, integration intensifies, leading to the development of tissues, organs, and functional systems of organs and tissues. Unlike I.S. Shklovsky (or rather his later views), I believed that the emergence of intelligent life was as inevitable as the emergence of chemical reactions and biological life.

But what is intelligence in relation to life? In my view, the key moment was the emergence of intelligence within a multicellular organism. The reproduction of chemical compartments was the first property that life acquired beyond chemical transformations. The second property was the differentiation of compartments, followed by their integration into tissues, organs, and organisms, with biochemical processes now permeating all of these biological systems. Vernadsky proposed the idea of the "ubiquity" of life: living matter is capable of spreading across the surface of the planet. It rapidly occupies all unclaimed areas of the biosphere, creating pressure on non-living nature.

Life, as an ordered system of chemical reactions, gave rise to self-replication, differentiation, and integration of biochemical systems that could no longer be reduced solely to chemical processes, even though all these properties of life remained inseparable from ordered chemical reactions. The diversity of material forms that emerged through systems of ordered chemical reactions is immense, and the number of new organic chemical compounds has grown exponentially. Over its existence, these systems have transformed the atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere, influenced continental drift, and much more [5], providing rich material for scientists to develop fields like paleontology, paleogenetics, evolutionary biochemistry, biogeochemistry, evolutionary theory, and many other disciplines. It should be noted that without the physics of electrons in the atoms of chemical elements, chemical reactions would not be possible. However, molecules and supramolecular structures cannot be reduced solely to the energy states of electrons in atoms.

The next property of life, which emerged specifically in multicellular organisms, was intercellular interactions – humoral and electrical, functioning as signals. The development of specialized areas sensitive to these signals – receptors, channels, and later synapses – marked a significant step. Nervous tissue, which in many higher organisms divides very little or not at all, devotes its entire resource to intercellular interactions – both electrical and chemical. Where mitosis is absent, electrogenesistakes precedence.

Much later, together with Professor A.M. Seledtsov, I co-authored an article for a student collection titled "Calcium Ions, cerebral paroxysms, epileptogenesis, mitosis, and apoptosis"[13]. At the time, we hypothesized that the calcium-calmodulin complex and nitric oxide are among the most ancient intracellular messengers. One of the most critical functions of calcium ion regulation in the nervous system is its role in apoptosis. Some effects of calcium ions on nervous tissue are temporally organized in a paroxysmal manner, primarily concerning pathological phenomena (epileptic paroxysms, the activation of pathological cravings for alcohol). Despite existing cellular calcium defenses, vertebrates – with their calcium-based skeletons – are prone to numerous pathological processes where hypercalcicity (an elevated concentration of calcium ions within the cell) plays a key role. These processes are temporally organized either paroxysmally (e.g., epileptic seizures, activation of alcohol cravings, certain cardiac arrhythmias) or non-paroxysmally (e.g., affective disorders, arterial hypertension).

We hypothesized that paroxysms in cases of hypercalcicity represent a process by which a cell (neuron) eliminates excitotoxicity, which would otherwise lead to apoptosis. This is most clearly observed in motor epileptic seizures. In such cases, the chemical energy of excitotoxicity is transformed into mechanical energy. The ease of this transformation is explained by the shared ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of the nervous and locomotor systems. Specifically, in neurons, the calcium-calmodulin complex acts as a transformer of chemical energy into electrical energy, while in skeletal muscles, the calcium-troponin complex converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. In both cases, calcium ions and structurally similar proteins – calmodulin and troponin play a leading role in energy transformation. Sometimes, the epileptic mechanism only partially prevents apoptosis, and some neurons die. Clinically, this can manifest as Todd’s paralysis, a well-known phenomenon.

Thus, we viewed epileptogenesisand apoptosis as alternative processes for neurons subjected to calcium excitotoxicity. This parallels the relationship between mitosis and apoptosis, where mitosis is also seen as an alternative to apoptosis. Neurons in an epileptic focus (like all other neurons) are incapable of mitotic division. Therefore, when exposed to calcium or other forms of excitotoxicity (e.g., glutamate-induced), they counteract it by imposing abnormal electrical activity on the entire brain tissue. In this sense, neurons in an epileptic focus behave similarly to cancerous cells, which impose themselves on the organism through abnormal cell division.

An epileptogenic focus, like a tumor, possesses a certain degree of autonomy. The cells in both cases are abnormal – in tumors, this manifests as tissue and cellular atypia, while in an epileptic focus, neuronal microdystopias are often observed. Therefore, their energy organization shares many similarities. This organizational resemblance may explain the phenomenon of mirror foci in epilepsy – a type of "energy metastasis.

In our view, as expressed in the mentioned article, cells in a multicellular organism face three almost mutually exclusive fates: mitosis, electrogenesis, or contraction. As a result, most myocytes are incapable of division, and the same applies to neurons. Dividing cells are incapable of muscle contraction or electrogenesis to the extent that is characteristic of cardiomyocytes, neurons, and multinucleated cells of striated muscle. In contrast, the cells of exocrine and endocrine glands divide intensively. This may be because they constantly expend plastic material, rather than energy material (as in the cases of electrogenesis and muscle contraction). Thus, secretion is not an alternative to mitosis—in fact, it likely promotes it. It appears that only processes consuming energy material (electrogenesis and muscle contraction) are alternatives to mitosis. We further explored the pathogenesis-based therapy of epileptic seizures, pathological cravings for alcohol and substances, and the pharmacological agents that could support successful treatment.

The most important aspect of these considerations is that the emergence of electrical currents in the brain, made possible by the presence of "chemical batteries," occurs because neurons lose a critical property of living compartments: the ability to reproduce. This loss enables neurons to dedicate all their resources to the complex intercellular interactions involving synapses, dendrites, axons, neurotransmitters, and electrical currents – all of which these structures exist to support.

And so, intelligence emerges- a psychic organism. Or perhaps a psychic organ. External to the body, external to the brain, yet inseparable from and irreducible to it. The psyche, in the words of Professor of Biology V.R. Bogdanov, is an extracorporeal organ relative to the body [2].