Keys to life: developments from Schrodinger to Kauffman and Ward

Abstract

The big challenge in our bio-century is to view the various accounts of what life is in a holistic perspective. When we want to explore what life really is genome and brain research are the two extremes poles of our inquiry. Against that background traditional theological reflection on life as a gift from a creator God calls for redefinition. The question of what life is cannot be viewed in isolation. Nor is it easy to explain how the various levels interrelate and eventually give rise to intelligent consciousness. Hence the question must focus on transitions from lower to higher levels of complexity. Crucial among these are the transition from nonlife to life; from the quantum realm to that of classical2 physics; the evolutionary transitions between diverse forms of life; the transition from matter (brain) to mind; and the transition between immanent and transcendent forms of consciousness. The mystery of life derives from its scope and openness. Discovery of its components made it possible to reduce it to one of its parts. To obviate that reduction we turn to the whole and its mysterious transitions, which necessarily entails a speculative element. Our a posteriori knowledge is inevitably followed by models based on a priori intuition. That is where awareness of the transcendent (religion) fits in. The emergence model promises to explain the transitions. At any rate it is an improvement on earlier notions of linear causality.