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.

It COULD have happened...this way

Say, of the billions and billions of planets which don't exist, there is one where the population has been allowed to use the idea of god, without having any clue as to what that label might mean. And it was here, amidst the atmospheres of supposition and the interstellar currents of the indeterminate, that the cleat prints of evolution reached a certain stage. An accelerated comprehension of a sphere called "the external world" was desirable: For reasons one can only guess at--- say it was USEFUL that some species could spread to other planets via some gravel path. This required a focus for centuries on that external sphere, even though this meant distorting other layers of growth, on a temporary basis. Attention to that which was parsible, superficially divisible, and thus rearrangeable, was forced upon this particular globe. And for reasons of efficiency this became the main focus of the energy produced on this one globe. By focus we mean that the particles at the leading edge of this push became rigid, and inflexible. Rigid means they could not consider the broader context of anything. Like moles underground these particles must just keep pushing and rearranging their tunnel surroundings.

After all it was only a temporary stage; what could be briefer than a few centuries. Those won't even be missed by the inhabitants there. Soon the era of the natural scientists will be back in proper perspective as a partialness.