Wolfgang Korsus
Dipl.Ing. NT , Astrophysiker
Klingenberg 40
25451 Quickborn
TEL.: +49 4106 69295
Handy: +49 162 5680456
Website : wolfgang.korsus.net
Chapter 7
Two terms from the international economy today,
that also fit into the first days of life on this planet 3 …………
COMPETITION AND COOPERATION
Dear readers, you can imagine that this article will also begin with a question. This has the unique advantage that the question makes the reader think back to what he has already read, but it also sparks a premonition of the text that may follow in his own „CPU“.
So that’s how I start:
Did anyone actually survive the introduction of photosynthesis back then ⁇
„Certainly, the creatures that were not harmed by oxygen because they themselves were the ones who were able to convert sunlight into sugar and oxygen. “
The „cyanobacteria“
This extraordinary ability allowed them to conquer the entire planet. However, …..I cannot hide the fact that even today there are still some very rare species of single-celled organisms that do not live on simple oxygen, but on extremely hot nitric acid or even hydrochloric acid. However, they live under extreme conditions at great depths of the earth or near damn hot springs.
To sum up, I would say that it was ultimately photosynthesis that changed our world from the bottom up. At first it only took place in the sea, but over time, around 2.5 billion years ago (already mentioned), oxygen also entered the atmosphere. Right there it slowly condensed into the ozone layer. I call this a top-down causality that changed the living conditions on the entire planet „Earth“ from top to bottom, so to speak.
What should not go unmentioned is the following: the ozone layer made it possible for living creatures to survive in the upper ten meters of the oceans. The ultraviolet radiation from the sun previously penetrated directly into the water and certainly destroyed all molecular structures. The habitats were enormously enlarged by the protective ozone layer. The result must have been a huge sigh of relief for life. There was also a radical change in the energy supply:
„from chemical energy to solar energy“, which was also a profound turning point in the development of life. In a way, it was like a competition that only a very specific type of cell could win.
And watch out!… Please note
……. include it in the background of your CPU:
‼ Competition forces you to adapt to changing circumstances.
circumstances, this competition is therefore the driving force of life ‼
Without it, nothing could develop and there would be no progress. It is also the reason why no two organisms of the same species are ever exactly the same. There are always small and minute variations among the representatives of a species. One is a little taller, another a little thicker, some carry out photosynthesis a little more efficiently or a little faster and so on…….
But which variation, which characteristic proves to be an advantage for the individual. This only becomes clear in retrospect, when this very creature successfully survives the next change in its environment and is thus able to pass on its advantageous genes to its offspring. I say the following sentence at almost all times:
‼Evolution is roughly equivalent to a bet on the future ‼
Let me now move my thoughts to the 21st century and come to the conclusion that a constant creativity and diversity of „cellular“ growth is also taking place in us, the human species. Cells do not always change abruptly. However, when they do, i.e. when cell proliferation and benign and malignant changes take place, then the control processes in the corresponding organism have not worked. Because they are the ones that actually keep our existence on track. So I realize that the person concerned is ill……….maybe even terminally ill.
Constant competition takes place in every living being and between all living beings, especially between the different species. It therefore boils down to an everyday process…. creatures are concerned with adapting optimally, or at least as well as possible, to all changing environmental conditions. It should be noted, however, that humans have always been particularly successful in this permanent struggle for survival. This is because we inhabit all of the Earth’s climate zones and adapt to our environment with the help of our cognitive abilities, language and science, culture and technology.
We humans can even protect ourselves almost perfectly against almost all natural events -think again- because we are often defenceless against attacks by bacteria and viruses…. These „micro and nano monsters“ manage to attack us again and again. However, every now and then they leave the battle victorious.
In terms of adaptability, they are truly the only ones who can compete with us:
Because, as far as I know, these „monsters“ can be found all over the world, from deep underground to the high atmosphere.
(The term high atmosphere refers to those higher areas of the earth’s atmosphere in which the air density or air pressure falls below a technically largely insignificant level).
Let us now take a closer look at prokaryotes, the cells that do not have a solid nucleus. Yes, their properties have remained the same, they have always done what bacteria have always done: Eat and be eaten. But what suddenly happened …..? A bacterium could no longer digest what it had ingested. (But there was nothing more than a big bellyache. Instead, the still-living bacterium delivered the „something“ it had ingested and, lo and behold, the ingesting bacterium could make good use of it. So the two monsters concluded a kind of free trade agreement with the following content. „I give you what you need and you give me what I want“. I call this a kind of working partnership with an intimate connection. The better term for something like this is …endosymbiosis, a term coined for the form of symbiosis in which the symbiont
(endosymbiont) lives within the host organism. Lo and behold, there were the first cells with an „enclosed cell nucleus“. Previously, the genetic material in prokaryotes swam around freely in the cell, now suddenly the new cell type had an internal division of labor like in a factory. I would like to point out specialized departments that were responsible for very specific tasks.
The genetic material was now located in the middle of the cell, neatly stowed away in a cell nucleus. Here, as is usual in a directorate, the direction was given.
But who provided the energy? It was the mitochondria. (What else happened, I’ll write it down at ….: In some cells, chloroplasts developed that were able to synthesize the pigment chlorophyll and thus carry out a completely new type of photosynthesis. Which we find again a little later in plants. By the way, I will come back to mitochondria for good reason. They are found in the human cell and can be used to determine quite precisely where we humans actually came from originally. It goes without saying that mitochondria have their own genetic material, which can be used to trace the original mother lines of humanity all the way to East Africa. Yes, I can understand many readers when they say: I don’t think that’s possible! Evolutionary researchers say that humans are very probably descended from only seven mothers who lived 72,000, perhaps 75,000 years ago in what is now Zimbabwe.
What follows is a transition to new cells called eukaryotes. Their development goes back about two billion years and there is also a predecessor; these are the prokaryotes. They evolved from them. New variants are constantly being formed and are considerably larger: a eukaryote, 10,000 times larger than the old bacterium, works as a giant factory with the help of high-performance mitochondria on an increasingly efficient energy supply and protein synthesis.
In other words:
The primordial cell of animals and plants has gone into operation and ushered in a new age of life.
Reproduction was actually boring, at most there was duplication or cloning, ….lbisher ! But a different effect followed, old was: one becomes two, new was :
two together now suddenly make a new living being. Hooray ……but no one shouts it !
I tend to call this „act“ a huge surge of creativity, because somehow it comes across as a shake-up of the world at that time. In what I call the „before“ there were, if at all, only the tiniest variations on an already known theme.
That’s just the evolution of bacteria, but very, very slowly. Patience is required – spit is still missing!
The truly „simple multiplication“ by doubling takes place extremely rapidly. My comment above applies again. (Patience is required) The actual „changes“ take quite a long time.
With eukaryotes, however, it is quite different. We know today that every new living organism represents a super new combination. It is a new way of adapting or developing a new trait that may be more successful in the future than the old version.
I have dedicated this chapter to the subject of competition and cooperation, it concerns the life of the bacterial masses that only existed at that time. It must have taken an eternity for such a thing to appear on the earth or planetary stage before humans ?….. !
However, the competitive nature of evolution at that time was already extremely evident. Because large numbers of competitors for food and habitat are on the doorstep of life. More and more life possibilities…….. are being tried out!
This process stabilizes itself, I would almost have said „by itself“ …….. by passing on the profitable parts of the genetic material.
However, the unsuccessful ones simply fall by the wayside, at least if I look at it statistically. In principle, there are always individual cases and they can come to rest in some small extension of a room, or rather get away with it.
Only one thing has always been shown in the course of life: those that cope best with changing environmental conditions will be the most successful as far as the survival of their species is concerned.
I now come to the COMPETITION. Where can I put the competition, it must be somewhere ? Yes, my answer is quite simple: it’s in the genes, not because they want it that way, but because they can’t be any other way. To put it succinctly, it’s simply part of life. I am very sorry if I have strayed a little into the philosophical with my last comments, but a purely empirical approach does not provide me with any more information.
A small inventory of initial life somehow resembles a chain of causality, like elementary building blocks. I’m thinking of cells, because they build up to become much larger cells, and more complex cells too, until more complex living beings finally emerge.
A principle quite parallel to the „history of life“. To put it even more simply: from simple building blocks to constantly growing, more complex systems. …simply intoxicating!
On the other hand, we can also see that the environmental conditions change to give rise to
highly complex living beings.
I would point to the enrichment of the atmosphere with oxygen up to the ozone layer. A hierarchy is emerging more and more clearly.
I also recognize a kind of structuring, in each case from bottom to top and, interestingly, also from top to bottom. For me personally, this leads to the following assertion:
The purely external existing conditions dictate the way of survival !
Without the corresponding abilities, the individuals and species naturally disappear again. The clear temporal sequence, the existing succession of processes and cause-effect relationships, lead purely automatically to selection. As I hope many of you are aware, a chronological sequence is defined by what I call the „world formula“:
# First the cause then the effect #
This can also be expressed in a somewhat more pleasant and certainly more comprehensible way for the „sensitive“, i.e. a similar sentence: If the environment has changed, living beings must simply adapt. However, I like to point out that if they don’t succeed, they will no longer be able to reproduce !!!!!!
……..The extent to which they reproduce therefore depends on the success of their personal adaptation.
The form of adaptation may also vary, …….perhaps it is those „that“ eat everyone that are particularly successful! But this type of adaptation also takes place a little later. Even the „eaters“ can only react to their victims. There can only be an „eater“ if there is also a victim.
I suggest, dear hopefully eager readers, that you first let what you have just heard sink in. Then slowly digest it „well“.
Because now we are caught in a dilemma, a difficult situation from which there seems to be no way out …….., also known as the chicken and egg problem. What came first?
‼ The hen? Or the egg ⁉
There is a solution for everything, only the nature of the solution is very often something „we“ don’t like. I suggest something difficult to digest. Of course, this solution is not easy either!
I’m talking about the ……….Co evolution. What is that….?
The question alone ‼ The hen? Or the egg ⁉ is quite naive and pointless.
Natural science has had an astonishingly difficult time with this question so far; one could say there is a stalemate. The hen and the egg are mutually dependent, one cannot exist without the other. What should a hen hatch from if not an egg? And conversely, who should lay an egg if not a hen?
Hen or egg, that’s a matter for passionate debate. Nevertheless, some people make the answer too easy for themselves. In evolutionary terms, eggs are older than today’s chickens; even dinosaurs laid eggs, so it is said that the egg came first. But this is not an accurate solution, because the problem only suffers a kind of shift and the new resulting question is certainly just as tricky as the old one: Which came first, dinosaur or egg?
Many stick with the chicken’s egg, but drift into the philosophical. The world’s first hen must have hatched from an egg laid by an animal that, by definition, could not yet have been a hen. But that doesn’t help either, full stop. Because although this egg was there first, it was not laid by a hen, so strictly speaking it was not a real hen’s egg. Next question: Does an egg belong more to the chick or more to the mother? And here we are again, the stalemate.
Let me try another way of avoiding the stalemate.
If, as I say, creatures with different adaptation strategies live together in the same environment, it can happen that one eats the other. However, this can possibly lead to it running out of food at some point. Which in turn can lead to the hunter dying out where possible. Here it comes ……Or the two cooperate. „Cooperation“ is just as essential as the principle of evolution,
„competition“. This is not about the survival of the fittest. It is about working together to create an opportunity for things to continue in peace. Because evolution means that the whole of nature, „environment and living beings“, interact dynamically with each other. If one eats everything, the „game is over“.
Co-evolution is precisely the opposite of „survival of the fittest“. This system must remain in a dynamic equilibrium, not a stationary one, because that means the end. Example:
A crystal is in stationary equilibrium, hard and immobile-dead matter.
In a dynamic equilibrium, however, the system can develop further, both from the bottom up, in that the ability to adapt is improved more and more, and from the top down, in that the changes in the environment correspond to the changes taking place down there.
Imagine if our planet Earth suddenly cooled down to 100°C within an hour. Is that the end of the day for everyone? A large number of people and living beings would immediately freeze to death and starve to death. But there would also be a few survivors, even among us humans. We would have a lot of technical problems, but we could probably overcome them over time. Populations can even react to drastic changes, at least in part. Somehow it has obviously continued over the past billion years.
next one follows