Thursday, October 15, 2015

Originalization


Another dear story about the origins of life (underwater thermal vents) and, unwittingly, the necessity of binary thought.

Worth the price of your expended attention: the word "serpentinization." As in: 

"Such vents are sources of molecular hydrogen, a side-product of a natural geological process called serpentinization...."

Naturally one wants to know, how that label arose, and did the namer have any sense of the irony of an allusion to the Biblical serpent. Perhaps it is obvious they must have, and I am obtuse.

Also this phrase regarding a possible cometary delivery of pre-biotic chemicals to earth:

"...organic material is thought to have been made available to the primitive Earth each year, of which the dominant source is so-called ‘exogenous delivery’ by comets. ..."

"Exogenous." As an explanation can only be potent if your attention is limited to TWO, and two only, options. Either life developed on the planet originally, or--- it came from somewhere else.

If however you can step back cerebrally, and look for a broader perspective, you can ask--- is saying life came via a comet (okay, the building blocks of life) any explanation at all, or does it not just push the question of origins behind a curtain where it does not effectively even 'exist,' since you do not have to think about it. That is the blinding effect of binary thought. In this case the question of origins. If you continue to question the circumstances of these 'origins' and push the questions back, then the usefulness and limitations of binary thought, may become apparent.

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