Non-human-designed control question

[MartinT]

[From
Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay

Â

        Bruce,

Fred, you ask

        What

is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material worldâ€??Â

        I

was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.

Â

        All

the bacteria, flora, vertebrates, non-vertebrates etc are
biological. Computers, AI, thermostats, regulators on
machines etc are human-designed. Therefore they are
biological transposed into machine.

Â

        The

origin of my question was a conversation about domains in
which PCT applies. It seems to me that PCT is a phenomenon
of life, or those instruments created as extensions of
humans (in particular) that mechanically perform human
activity at a distance.

Â

[EetuP]

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2007-09-26]

(I sent this yesterday by email, but it did not go through, so I resend it via
the archive interface in https://lists.illinois.edu/lists/arc/csgnet )

Hi,
here are some interesting musings of B Powers:
http://www.livingcontrolsystems.com/intro_papers/evolution_purpose.pdf

Eetu Pikkarainen
PhD (Ed.), (Title of) Adjunct Prof., University Lecturer (in Education)
Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Finland
Research Group: https://wiki.oulu.fi/display/theored

Schools in Transition: Linking Past, Present, and Future in Educational
Practice
    Edited by Pauli Siljander, Kimmo Kontio and Eetu Pikkarainen

https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/other-books/schools-in-transition/

Lähettäjä: Martin Taylor [mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net]
Lähetetty: 25. syyskuutata 2017 6:30
Vastaanottaja: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Aihe: Non-human-designed control question

[Martin Taylor 2017.09.23.13.54]

[From Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay

Bruce, Fred, you ask
What is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material world�??
I was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.

All the bacteria, flora, vertebrates, non-vertebrates etc are biological.
Computers, AI, thermostats, regulators on machines etc are human-designed.
Therefore they are biological transposed into machine.

The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT
applies. It seems to me that PCT is a phenomenon of life, or those instruments
created as extensions of humans (in particular) that mechanically perform
human activity at a distance.

Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of
life, as opposed to the existence of certain chemicals, or self-replication.
Science fiction authors have often dealt with life forms that use different
chemistry, and even different phases of matter in which the life forms might
be the size of solar systems or even galaxies and operate on time scales of
millennia or millions of years. The common characteristic of all of them is
control.

If this is a correct view, the "origin-of-life" question becomes a question of
how control could emerge from non-living matter. I suppose that a proper
answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a
non-biological, non-human-designed, material world, so it can happen. We are
the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate without
the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us?

That's an open question, which would probably be best addressed by analyzing
how it might have happened when it did happen. Many people have addressed this
from the viewpoint of chemistry, apparently with the idea that if you can
produce the basic chemicals of life, such as amino acids or RNA, then the
problem has been solved. I don't think anyone except possibly Bill Powers has
looked seriously at this from the viewpoint that what you need is control that
can reduplicate itself within some environment that is likely to exist
somewhere in the Universe. I don't know how seriously Bill did look at it, but
he did muse about it in some of our correspondence.

To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops
would be likely to self-assemble and start reduplicating would be a really
neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman's discussion of
autocatalytic loops in "At Home in the Universe" might be a start on one line
of background thought.

But it's not practical to imagine that such a project could be anything other
than speculative, given that the one instance of which we know probably took a
few or a few hundred million years to get started, and a few billion years to
get to multicellular ("societal") organisms. I very much doubt that there
could be a theoretical proof that the way we got started (if we could figure
that out) is the only way it could happen, and even if there were, the theory
might turn out to be of the kind that proves bumblebees cannot fly. So the
second, the question kind of answer to your original question could never be
answered in the negative with any assurance, but could be answered positively
if an example of a control system were ever to be discovered that had no
ancestral connection with any existing life form.

Martin

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin (2017.09.27 19:37 ET)]

Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay

Â

Bruce, Fred, you ask

What is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material worldâ€??Â

I was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.

I understand the term “biological” as concerning all naturally evolved control systems. Adding to that the set of designed control systems would together encompass all possible control systems. But you said human-designed control systems, so that leaves out control systems designed by non-human agents. I wondered if that was what you had in mind. At some stage, human-designed control systems may design other control systems. And there may be non-human naturally evolved intelligent beings who design control systems.Â

But whatever the provenance of a control system, its behavior will by definition be ‘control-theoretic’, and if it is an autonomous control system (with internally set and externally inaccessible reference values) then its behavior will by definition be ‘PCT behavior’. Otherwise, it is not a control system. So that aspect of your question left me very puzzled and not at all convinced that I had understood what you intended to ask.

···

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 3:30 AM, Eetu Pikkarainen eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi wrote:

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2007-09-26]

(I sent this yesterday by email, but it did not go through, so I resend it via

the archive interface in https://lists.illinois.edu/lists/arc/csgnet )

Hi,

here are some interesting musings of B Powers:

http://www.livingcontrolsystems.com/intro_papers/evolution_purpose.pdf

Eetu Pikkarainen

PhD (Ed.), (Title of) Adjunct Prof., University Lecturer (in Education)

Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Finland

Research Group: https://wiki.oulu.fi/display/theored

Schools in Transition: Linking Past, Present, and Future in Educational

Practice

  Edited by Pauli Siljander, Kimmo Kontio and Eetu Pikkarainen

https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/other-books/schools-in-transition/

Lähettäjä: Martin Taylor [mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net]

Lähetetty: 25. syyskuutata 2017 6:30

Vastaanottaja: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu

Aihe: Non-human-designed control question

[Martin Taylor 2017.09.23.13.54]

[From Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay

Bruce, Fred, you ask

What is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material worldâ€??

I was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.

All the bacteria, flora, vertebrates, non-vertebrates etc are biological.

Computers, AI, thermostats, regulators on machines etc are human-designed.

Therefore they are biological transposed into machine.

The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT

applies. It seems to me that PCT is a phenomenon of life, or those instruments

created as extensions of humans (in particular) that mechanically perform

human activity at a distance.

Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of

life, as opposed to the existence of certain chemicals, or self-replication.

Science fiction authors have often dealt with life forms that use different

chemistry, and even different phases of matter in which the life forms might

be the size of solar systems or even galaxies and operate on time scales of

millennia or millions of years. The common characteristic of all of them is

control.

If this is a correct view, the “origin-of-life” question becomes a question of

how control could emerge from non-living matter. I suppose that a proper

answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a

non-biological, non-human-designed, material world, so it can happen. We are

the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate without

the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us?

That’s an open question, which would probably be best addressed by analyzing

how it might have happened when it did happen. Many people have addressed this

from the viewpoint of chemistry, apparently with the idea that if you can

produce the basic chemicals of life, such as amino acids or RNA, then the

problem has been solved. I don’t think anyone except possibly Bill Powers has

looked seriously at this from the viewpoint that what you need is control that

can reduplicate itself within some environment that is likely to exist

somewhere in the Universe. I don’t know how seriously Bill did look at it, but

he did muse about it in some of our correspondence.

To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops

would be likely to self-assemble and start reduplicating would be a really

neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman’s discussion of

autocatalytic loops in “At Home in the Universe” might be a start on one line

of background thought.

But it’s not practical to imagine that such a project could be anything other

than speculative, given that the one instance of which we know probably took a

few or a few hundred million years to get started, and a few billion years to

get to multicellular (“societal”) organisms. I very much doubt that there

could be a theoretical proof that the way we got started (if we could figure

that out) is the only way it could happen, and even if there were, the theory

might turn out to be of the kind that proves bumblebees cannot fly. So the

second, the question kind of answer to your original question could never be

answered in the negative with any assurance, but could be answered positively

if an example of a control system were ever to be discovered that had no

ancestral connection with any existing life form.

Martin

[AngusJ]

Angus Jenkinson (2017-10-04:18:52, UK)

Martin

Responding to this post (2017.09.23.13.54):

I have extracted from the text below these key remarks.

AJ: The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT applies.

MT: Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of life, as opposed to the existence of certain
chemicals, or self-replication.

MT: If this is a correct view, the “origin-of-life” question becomes a question of how control could emerge from non-living
matter. I suppose that a proper answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a non-biological, non-human-designed, material world, so it can happen. We are the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate
without the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us? //That’s an open question,…

In the first instance, your responses extremely helpful and I am sorry I did not make that clear earlier. I am thinking in particular, here, of the first
of the two sentences I have extracted.

If what you are saying is true, and you are indeed responding to the similar hypothesis I had, then it is the case, provided only that your second statement
is also true, that there are/would be two definitively different cosmic domains of existence and the laws of causality that apply in the one are not relevant to the other in the very concept of causality might require a transformation. That is my proposition
and I think it is implicit within PCT. And I had rather assumed over time that it was everybody’s agreement. Hence my enquiry about language. In this respect I do not think that linear to circular does sufficient justice to the difference.

And then there is your second remark. I think if one was to take an open-minded scientific approach we would have to hypothesise to different possibilities.
One is the possibility but at some point a transformation took place between the inert non-living non-control world and its reciprocal partner. But to be open-minded we would have to accept a second possibility, the one you reject. This would be that the
inert non-living non-control world was none of these things but that it merely appeared to be so as a result of our processes of perception and conception. What would support that hypothesis is of course the fact that for most of human history the present
view would have been considered nonsense, in fact unimaginable.

For now, what I take to be a realistic position is that however true it may be that within the phenomenal world of our observation, a certain form of
causality operates in the inorganic inert world, it is not operative in the other except when they are behaving as if they were inert objects (a cannonball will knock you over before you have much chance to control anything). That means that in social affairs
are quite different kind of approach to explanation needs to be found from the one that is commonly used and implicit, if overlooked, in many theories and practices.

Your point of view on this would be most interesting.

And then you made a further remark… equally interesting

MT: To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops would be likely to self-assemble and start
reduplicating would be a really neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman’s

AJ: Have you seen Kauffman, S., Logan, R. K., Este, R., Goebel, R., Hobill, D., & Shmulevich, I. (2008). Propagating organization: An enquiry. Biology
& Philosophy, 23(1), 27-45.?

Regards

···

………â¦â€¦â€¦………………………………………………………………….

Angus Jenkinson

On 25/09/2017, 04:30, “Martin Taylor” mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net wrote:

[Martin Taylor 2017.09.23.13.54]

[From Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay

Bruce, Fred, you ask

What is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material world�?

I was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.

All the bacteria, flora, vertebrates, non-vertebrates etc are biological. Computers, AI, thermostats, regulators on machines etc are human-designed. Therefore
they are biological transposed into machine.

The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT applies. It seems to me that PCT is a phenomenon of life, or those instruments
created as extensions of humans (in particular) that mechanically perform human activity at a distance.

Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of life, as opposed to the existence of certain chemicals, or self-replication. Science fiction authors have often dealt with life forms that use different chemistry,
and even different phases of matter in which the life forms might be the size of solar systems or even galaxies and operate on time scales of millennia or millions of years. The common characteristic of all of them is control.

If this is a correct view, the “origin-of-life” question becomes a question of how control could emerge from non-living matter. I suppose that a proper answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a non-biological, non-human-designed,
material world, so it can happen. We are the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate without the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us?

That’s an open question, which would probably be best addressed by analyzing how it might have happened when it did happen. Many people have addressed this from the viewpoint of chemistry, apparently with the idea that if you can produce the basic chemicals
of life, such as amino acids or RNA, then the problem has been solved. I don’t think anyone except possibly Bill Powers has looked seriously at this from the viewpoint that what you need is control that can reduplicate itself within some environment that is
likely to exist somewhere in the Universe. I don’t know how seriously Bill did look at it, but he did muse about it in some of our correspondence.

To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops would be likely to self-assemble and start reduplicating would be a really neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman’s discussion of autocatalytic loops in “At Home
in the Universe” might be a start on one line of background thought.

But it’s not practical to imagine that such a project could be anything other than speculative, given that the one instance of which we know probably took a few or a few hundred million years to get started, and a few billion years to get to multicellular (“societal”)
organisms. I very much doubt that there could be a theoretical proof that the way we got started (if we could figure that out) is the only way it could happen, and even if there were, the theory might turn out to be of the kind that proves bumblebees cannot
fly. So the second, the question kind of answer to your original question could never be answered in the negative with any assurance, but could be answered positively if an example of a control system were ever to be discovered that had no ancestral connection
with any existing life form.

Martin

[AngusJ]

Angus Jenkinson (2017-10-04.22.44)

Eetu
Thank you, an interesting speculative paper. He was quite an intelligence. The best case I think for a Nobel prize that did not get awarded.
While it makes a good deal of sense, the problem with readings of the past is that they tend to depend on perceptual phenomena that could not have existed then. I mean that our models of past nature depend on reading back the results of instruments and consciousness that did not then exist. This however takes us into high epistemology so lets not go there.
Water interests me because it is self-organising to a high degree and of course seems to have been a basis of life.
I like Bill’s ending: The thread that runs through this story of life from its beginning to the present is that of control and purpose. I have not tried to account for the appear-ance of living systems as a passive consequence of external forces, or for the stability of living molecules simply as a matter of the strength of chemical bonds. Instead I have looked for a way in which stability could have resulted from an active process, one that counteracts disturbances that, unopposed, would alter the organization of a living system.
����……��������������…………………………�.
Angus Jenkinson

···

On 27/09/22017, 17:03, "Eetu Pikkarainen" <eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi> wrote:

    [Eetu Pikkarainen 2007-09-26]
    
    (I sent this yesterday by email, but it did not go through, so I resend it via
    the archive interface in https://lists.illinois.edu/lists/arc/csgnet )
    
    Hi,
    here are some interesting musings of B Powers:
    http://www.livingcontrolsystems.com/intro_papers/evolution_purpose.pdf
    
    Eetu Pikkarainen
    PhD (Ed.), (Title of) Adjunct Prof., University Lecturer (in Education)
    Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Finland
    Research Group: https://wiki.oulu.fi/display/theored
    
    Schools in Transition: Linking Past, Present, and Future in Educational
    Practice
        Edited by Pauli Siljander, Kimmo Kontio and Eetu Pikkarainen
    
    https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/other-books/schools-in-transition/
    
    Lähettäjä: Martin Taylor [mailto:mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net]
    Lähetetty: 25. syyskuutata 2017 6:30
    Vastaanottaja: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
    Aihe: Non-human-designed control question
    
    [Martin Taylor 2017.09.23.13.54]
    
    [From Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay
    
    Bruce, Fred, you ask
    What is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material world�??
    I was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.
    
    All the bacteria, flora, vertebrates, non-vertebrates etc are biological.
    Computers, AI, thermostats, regulators on machines etc are human-designed.
    Therefore they are biological transposed into machine.
    
    The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT
    applies. It seems to me that PCT is a phenomenon of life, or those instruments
    created as extensions of humans (in particular) that mechanically perform
    human activity at a distance.
    
    Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of
    life, as opposed to the existence of certain chemicals, or self-replication.
    Science fiction authors have often dealt with life forms that use different
    chemistry, and even different phases of matter in which the life forms might
    be the size of solar systems or even galaxies and operate on time scales of
    millennia or millions of years. The common characteristic of all of them is
    control.
    
    If this is a correct view, the "origin-of-life" question becomes a question of
    how control could emerge from non-living matter. I suppose that a proper
    answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a
    non-biological, non-human-designed, material world, so it can happen. We are
    the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate without
    the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us?
    
    That's an open question, which would probably be best addressed by analyzing
    how it might have happened when it did happen. Many people have addressed this
    from the viewpoint of chemistry, apparently with the idea that if you can
    produce the basic chemicals of life, such as amino acids or RNA, then the
    problem has been solved. I don't think anyone except possibly Bill Powers has
    looked seriously at this from the viewpoint that what you need is control that
    can reduplicate itself within some environment that is likely to exist
    somewhere in the Universe. I don't know how seriously Bill did look at it, but
    he did muse about it in some of our correspondence.
    
    To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops
    would be likely to self-assemble and start reduplicating would be a really
    neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman's discussion of
    autocatalytic loops in "At Home in the Universe" might be a start on one line
    of background thought.
    
    But it's not practical to imagine that such a project could be anything other
    than speculative, given that the one instance of which we know probably took a
    few or a few hundred million years to get started, and a few billion years to
    get to multicellular ("societal") organisms. I very much doubt that there
    could be a theoretical proof that the way we got started (if we could figure
    that out) is the only way it could happen, and even if there were, the theory
    might turn out to be of the kind that proves bumblebees cannot fly. So the
    second, the question kind of answer to your original question could never be
    answered in the negative with any assurance, but could be answered positively
    if an example of a control system were ever to be discovered that had no
    ancestral connection with any existing life form.
    
    Martin

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin (2017.10.14 17:30 PT)]

Angus Jenkinson (2017-10-04:18:52, UK)–

If what you are saying is true, and you are indeed responding to the similar hypothesis I had, then it is the case, provided only that your second statement is also true, that there are/would be two definitively different cosmic domains of existence and the laws of causality that apply in the one are not relevant to the other in the very concept of causality might require a transformation. That is my proposition and I think it is implicit within PCT. And I had rather assumed over time that it was everybody’s agreement. Hence my enquiry about language. In this respect I do not think that linear to circular does sufficient justice to the difference.

Two additional words: One domain is entropic, the other counters entropy by controlling.

However, I too am sympathetic to the animism that has until recently been almost universal in human belief-disbelief systems. Are e.g. crystals controlling over a much longer timescale than we, and our interventions analogous to that cannonball overwhelming ability to control? And yes, water is a fascinating case. The perception that e.g. trees and mosses are alive has not been contested, though a demonstration that they are controlling is not as obvious as it is for an animal.

···

On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 10:53 AM, Angus Jenkinson angus@angusjenkinson.com wrote:

Angus Jenkinson (2017-10-04:18:52, UK)

Â

Martin

Responding to this post (2017.09.23.13.54):

Â

I have extracted from the text below these key remarks.

Â

AJ: The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT applies.

MT: Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of life, as opposed to the existence of certain
chemicals, or self-replication.

MT: If this is a correct view, the “origin-of-life” question becomes a question of how control could emerge from non-living
matter. I suppose that a proper answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a non-biological, non-human-designed, material world, so it can happen. We are the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate
without the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us? //That’s an open question,…

Â

In the first instance, your responses extremely helpful and I am sorry I did not make that clear earlier. I am thinking in particular, here, of the first
of the two sentences I have extracted.

If what you are saying is true, and you are indeed responding to the similar hypothesis I had, then it is the case, provided only that your second statement
is also true, that there are/would be two definitively different cosmic domains of existence and the laws of causality that apply in the one are not relevant to the other in the very concept of causality might require a transformation. That is my proposition
and I think it is implicit within PCT. And I had rather assumed over time that it was everybody’s agreement. Hence my enquiry about language. In this respect I do not think that linear to circular does sufficient justice to the difference.

Â

And then there is your second remark. I think if one was to take an open-minded scientific approach we would have to hypothesise to different possibilities.Â
One is the possibility but at some point a transformation took place between the inert non-living non-control world and its reciprocal partner. But to be open-minded we would have to accept a second possibility, the one you reject. This would be that the
inert non-living non-control world was none of these things but that it merely appeared to be so as a result of our processes of perception and conception. What would support that hypothesis is of course the fact that for most of human history the present
view would have been considered nonsense, in fact unimaginable.

Â

For now, what I take to be a realistic position is that however true it may be that within the phenomenal world of our observation, a certain form of
causality operates in the inorganic inert world, it is not operative in the other except when they are behaving as if they were inert objects (a cannonball will knock you over before you have much chance to control anything). That means that in social affairs
are quite different kind of approach to explanation needs to be found from the one that is commonly used and implicit, if overlooked, in many theories and practices.

Â

Your point of view on this would be most interesting.

Â

And then you made a further remark… equally inteeresting

Â

MT: To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops would be likely to self-assemble and start
reduplicating would be a really neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman’s

Â

AJ: Have you seen Kauffman, S., Logan, R. K., Este, R., Goebel, R., Hobill, D., & Shmulevich, I. (2008). Propagating organization: An enquiry. Biology
& Philosophy, 23(1), 27-45.?

Regards

………€¦â€¦……………………………………………………… ¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.

Angus Jenkinson

Â

Â

Â

On 25/09/2017, 04:30, “Martin Taylor” mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net wrote:

Â

[Martin Taylor 2017.09.23.13.54]

[From Angus Jenkinson. 2017.9.23] Apologies for the delay

Â

Bruce, Fred, you ask

What is the “nonbiological, non-human-designed, material worldâ€??Â

I was asking what PCT behaviour there is in this domain.

Â

All the bacteria, flora, vertebrates, non-vertebrates etc are biological. Computers, AI, thermostats, regulators on machines etc are human-designed. Therefore
they are biological transposed into machine.

Â

The origin of my question was a conversation about domains in which PCT applies. It seems to me that PCT is a phenomenon of life, or those instruments
created as extensions of humans (in particular) that mechanically perform human activity at a distance.

Â

Yes. I have long considered evidence of control to be the primary signature of life, as opposed to the existence of certain chemicals, or self-replication. Science fiction authors have often dealt with life forms that use different chemistry,
and even different phases of matter in which the life forms might be the size of solar systems or even galaxies and operate on time scales of millennia or millions of years. The common characteristic of all of them is control.

If this is a correct view, the “origin-of-life” question becomes a question of how control could emerge from non-living matter. I suppose that a proper answer to your question would be twofold. (1) Life (control) did arise from a non-biological, non-human-designed,
material world, so it can happen. We are the evidence. (2) Could life arise from a different material substrate without the intervention of pre-existing control systems such as us?

That’s an open question, which would probably be best addressed by analyzing how it might have happened when it did happen. Many people have addressed this from the viewpoint of chemistry, apparently with the idea that if you can produce the basic chemicals
of life, such as amino acids or RNA, then the problem has been solved. I don’t think anyone except possibly Bill Powers has looked seriously at this from the viewpoint that what you need is control that can reduplicate itself within some environment that is
likely to exist somewhere in the Universe. I don’t know how seriously Bill did look at it, but he did muse about it in some of our correspondence.

To discover the minimal requirements of an environment in which control loops would be likely to self-assemble and start reduplicating would be a really neat doctoral research project, I think. Stuart Kaufman’s discussion of autocatalytic loops in “At Home
in the Universe” might be a start on one line of background thought.

But it’s not practical to imagine that such a project could be anything other than speculative, given that the one instance of which we know probably took a few or a few hundred million years to get started, and a few billion years to get to multicellular (“societal”)
organisms. I very much doubt that there could be a theoretical proof that the way we got started (if we could figure that out) is the only way it could happen, and even if there were, the theory might turn out to be of the kind that proves bumblebees cannot
fly. So the second, the question kind of answer to your original question could never be answered in the negative with any assurance, but could be answered positively if an example of a control system were ever to be discovered that had no ancestral connection
with any existing life form.

Martin