 |
| Thinking humans - an unlikely product of dead matter |
As thinking humans we are all the unlikely
product of dead matter. Some time ago, and for reasons still poorly understood,
the dead matter of which we are made got lucky. After exploring innumerable
dead ends, long chain molecules eventually emerged which could manufacture near
exact copies of themselves. This was no mean feat for dead matter, since the
act of replication could both store and transmit information, accelerating the
process of self-organisation.
Later the dead Earth itself achieved
consciousness, not as the mythical Gaia of Greens, but as thinking, self-aware
humans. Dead atoms of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen which were once
in the ground and air self-organised to such a degree that they began to walk
the Earth. But what was truly impressive was that the humans themselves got
organised.
Through mimicking, then language and
eventually the imprint of writing, ideas could be stored and transmitted to
others. Each new generation of replicating humans could avoid the dead ends of
the past and learn from their predecessors, while adding their own thoughts to
the accumulation of ideas.
But these ideas were no mere idle
philosophy. Soon ideas began to transform the Earth itself. First, the
re-organisation of nature more to our liking through agriculture, and then the
real awakening from millennia of Malthusian stagnation through the industrial
revolution. Whether due to the far-reaching ideas of the Scottish enlightenment
or the innovations of James Watt, it was realised that the future could be
radically different from the past. A potent mix of new, energy dense fuels and
radical ideas allowed the organisation of matter to soar in both quantity and
complexity.
In this new phase of self-organisation it is
humans themselves who are manipulating dead matter through ideas and energy.
Using concentrated, low entropy energy, we can manipulate matter to our liking,
now on ever smaller scales. Our ideas create complex, low entropy (ordered) structures
of matter leaving high entropy (disordered) waste heat. Until the recent past
the unthinking Earth could manipulate mostly atoms such as carbon and hydrogen,
oxygen and nitrogen through organic biology. But through the emergence of
thinking humans, flows of inorganic materials such metals and minerals are now
organised in a spiral of growing complexity.
And it is through our ideas and innovation
that humans continue to re-shape the world. Not to devastate it, but to give it
context and meaning, and often to improve on nature's often poor productivity,
whether fissioning atoms or splicing genes. Of course the misanthropic forms of
contemporary Green thinking see human life as turning nature into dead matter.
But in reality, humanity is turning dead matter into conscious life, now all
seven billion of us.
In any case,
it is through the same exploitation of energy that unthinking biology has been
delaying the unavoidable entropic unwinding of the universe in our locality,
dumping high entropy heat to cold space, and thus allowing complex
self-organisation on Earth. Self-organising systems such as rain forests
continuously manufacture complex structures from dead matter by using sunlight
to photosynthesise, while radiating waste heat to cold space through their leaf
canopy. Dead matter is turned into organised, low entropy biological
structures. Humanity itself is just an extension to this process of
self-organisation, but using energy dense fuels to escape the photosynthetic
limit of diffuse biomass to drive own organisation of matter.
But in this
accelerating complexity, some argue that humans are only a transient phase of
self-organisation. While this may ultimately prove true, we shouldn’t hold our
breath waiting for the technological singularity which techno-prophets believe
will herald machine consciousness and either liberate us from the slavery of
labour, or enslave us. We certainly shouldn’t lose sleep over the coming of
self-replicating smart matter, the grey goo feared by the senior-but-one royal.
It’s us. We should recognise that humans themselves are simply exquisite self-replicating
smart matter, copying ourselves and our evolving ideas into the far future. The
emergence of humanity was the singularity of biological evolution, but that
singularity is firmly in the past.
The phase change of complexity which arrived
with thinking humans, and then accelerated through the industrial revolution
has transformed the world for the better, into a place more accommodating to
humans and their needs. But the early innovations which began to re-shape the
world have of course been clumsy. For example, the pulse of carbon currently
working it's way from the ground to the atmosphere is a transient, an
unintended sign of the spectacular growth in low entropy energy consumption
which began with the phase change of the industrial revolution. As we
transition towards energy flows which are more energy dense and efficient, the
carbon will return to the Earth, locked up once more in biomass and ultimately
put back into deep geological storage.
As a measure of the potency of modern humans
and their ideas, the current era is often termed the Anthropocene, an era in
which humanity itself is directing flows of energy and materials on a planetary
scale. For mainstream Green thinking this is a worrying development which needs
to be quickly contained. For others, such as a new wave of enlightened eco-pragmatists
led by Stewart Brand and others, the Anthropocene is to be welcomed. It
represents a decoupling of humanity from the vagaries of nature, and the real
possibility of humanity actively shaping and protecting the Earth.
In the past, unthinking nature stumbled from
one catastrophe to another, whether through ice age or asteroid impact. But the
advent of thinking humans offers the prospect of a future of bold innovations
on a global scale. For example, Geoengineering is emerging as a tool
to offset the regressive impacts of future climate change, human driven or
otherwise. And even now, human
innovation can tweak the orbits of small asteroids, either to avoid potential
impacts, or perhaps to capture them for future resource use. In a small way at
least, our ideas can begin to re-arrange the solar system more to our liking, a
feat of prowess unimaginable to even our most recent ancestors. This is not human
conceit or naive optimism, but a pragmatic recognition of where the human
enterprise can lead us.
The creation of low entropy order leads to
structures which are far from equilibrium, either through unthinking biology or
human innovation. So let's be clear, there is no delicate balance of nature.
There is no equilibrium. The moon is in equilibrium and it’s dead. The Earth is
in a highly non-equilibrium state with colossal flows of energy and materials,
such as the closed-loop manufacturing of biology or heat transfer in the
atmosphere. And thinking humans are now beginning to manipulate these flows on
larger and larger scales.
One of the key characteristics of such non-equilibrium
systems is their unpredictability, their adaptability and their sheer richness.
This is what makes the enterprise of life on Earth in all its forms, from the
natural world to the economy, so colourful and compelling. If the natural world
was in equilibrium it would be dead. If society was in equilibrium it would be
unbearably dull and if the economy was in perpetual equilibrium innovation
would simply cease.
The alternative to the growing complexity
brought about by human ideas and innovation is the contemporary idea of
sustainability, a dangerous idea at the philosophical level never mind its
socially regressive practical implementation. In comparison to the growing
complexity and self-organisation of the human enterprise, sustainability offers
an asymptotic steady-state towards which humanity could certainly evolve. It
also represents a dead end, socially, culturally and economically.
With the endowment of energy in nuclear
fuels alone there is sufficient low entropy energy to sustain a multi-billion
population of thinking humans into the distant future. On larger scales, there
is likely enough water orbiting the Sun as comets for a population of many
trillion humans in an imagined future solar civilisation. It is only recently that
the dead matter of the Earth, which long ago self-organised into thinking
humans, can reach out with machines and scratch the surface of distant moons
and planets. If the potent self-organising enterprise that is humanity
eventually escapes from the Earth, then we have the resources and opportunity to
fill a dead and apparently empty cosmos.
Or, we could simply stay put, cocooned and
culturally ossifying in a sustainable society, waiting to be scoured from the
Earth by the next Milankovitch cycle or Earth crossing rock. Save the planet
and bring self-organising life to the cosmos? Yes, it’s a big ask, so let's not
screw it up through lack of ambition.
First published Spiked 13 December 2011
