If DNA is the Word, then the Word was not in the beginning. So says Freeman Dyson. DNA or RNA was only the second beginning, hooking into a pre-existing protein life like a virus parasite.

Extending Lynn Margulis' (1981) picture of the eukaryotic cell as the result of cooperation (symbiosis) of two or three more primitive (prokaryotic) cells further back in time, Dyson sees even the nucleic acids as only later adjuncts, though necessary for subsequent evolution, as it turned out. However, if this very early symbiosis had not occurred, other lines of development, quite inconceivable to us, might have resulted.

What happened in the first beginning, he does not say, except to indicate that metabolism began as chemical cycles involving proteins and energy production and consumption. And he adds a third component of the earliest life, besides replication (DNA or RNA) and metabolism (protein), (which he calls software and hardware, respectively); the third component is spatial segregation of the initial living matter into droplets of "coacervate" (a kind of a liquid precipitate from the main aqueous phase, like the oily droplets in an emulsion; this concept was used by Oparin in his book "The Origin of Life"). The coacervate droplets were separated from the surrounding medium by a primitive membrane (somewhat like soap films stabilizing an oil-in-water emulsion) and became proto-cells, even before the metabolism inside became fully functional. The separation is necessary, because the intricate mechanisms of life can develop and stabilize with sufficient intensity to become self-sustaining in only limited regions of space, and they must be kept from being constantly diluted by the lifeless medium in which they are suspended.

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I will try to speculate now about that initial push, the real first beginning. This is a bit audacious, because little is known about it. James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis, wrote that to him the origin of life is "ineffable". But it is not tabu territory to speculate about, which many have done. Our very real fascination with it will not permit us to stay away.

Many years ago, Lecomte De Nouy "proved" that life could not have arisen by chance or accident, because it is just too improbable to have all the right atoms to come together by chance in the right numbers and configurations. He calculated the probability of this n-body collision, and concluded that the time required for this to happen by chance would be far longer than the known age of the universe. Ergo, he reasoned, God must have created life.

To me, that argument is fallacious, because

no one has ever assumed such an n-body collision - the coming together would be gradual and stepwise, from building block to bigger building block, as in many ordinary chemical reactions. Moreover, he totally ignored inter-atomic and inter-molecular forces of attraction (valence or Van der Waals), which make atoms "stick together" in collisions instead of bouncing off elastically. Atoms are not just a bunch of billiard balls. The thermodynamic equation F = H - ST describes the situation. (F is free energy, H is total energy, S is entropy, T is absolute temperature.) F is a measure of the tendency of macromolecules to build up, H is the chemical bonding attraction which helps it along, and S is the tendency to disorder, i.e. the tendency for the macromolecules to fly apart again, which they do with increasing alacrity as the temperature goes up. So the build-up is governed by these two opposing tendencies, to build up and tear down. The entropic tendency to tear down large improbable structures like proteins is admittedly very high, and therefore the probability of their formation and preservation is very low - but not quite as low by far as Lecomte De Nouy calculated. The universe has had enough time to form proteins spontaneously, but probably not to preserve them for continuous operation, without further processes helping out.

Thermodynamics is all about equilibrium; but living systems are Prigoginian structures - far from equilibrium, open to through-flow of matter and energy, and continuously self-regenerating through intricate cycles. These are called dissipative structures, and they build up high negentropy inside by exporting entropy outside. (This is why even primitive proto-cells need a membrane - to distinguish the inside from the outside.) Not all dissipative structures are "alive" (whatever that means - I have not even defined "life"); some are just self-perpetuating chemical reactions like the Belousov Zhabotinsky reaction maintained by Prigogine in his "Brusselator", or the patterns one gets by heating shallow layers of water. But of course, the most interesting dissipative structures are alive, and Prigoginian theory is interesting mainly because of this connection.

The main feature of Prigoginian dissipative structures is pattern maintenance; while matter and energy flow through quite freely and sometimes quite rapidly, the pattern is preserved, in what has been called a hyper-stable condition. In the case of early life, "the pattern" refers to the metabolic energy cycles that Dyson mentions. The initial push to form the pattern would come from the energy of sunlight, lightning bolts, or volcanism on the primitive earth in a reducing atmosphere.

It is known from Miller's experiments that, even today, we can form amino acid solutions by passing electrical discharges through a reducing mixture composed of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide. From the reactants to the products, the path is not very steeply up in the free-energy landscape, and the amino acids formed are fairly stable. Amino acids are even found in meteorites, so they are not that uncommon in the universe. They are less stable in today's oxygen-rich atmosphere, but now that does not matter any more. (Carbon dioxide is the most stable form of carbon under today's conditions.)

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, but they don't hook up (polymerize) spontaneously. There is a free-energy hill to climb up to proteins. Perhaps (this is speculative) the energy transfer needs an intermediate, like the ATP-ADP-AMP system (or some other molecules with high-energy phosphate bonds). (ATP is adenosine triphosphate, ADP is adenosine diphosphate, AMP is adenosine monophosphate; they form from each other by the addition or subtraction of phosphate groups, absorbing or liberating energy in the process.) This system could be "charged" by solar energy and then help polymerize the amino acids to proteins. The proteins would eventually fall apart again (depolymerize), so we still have no stable cycle. Repeated injections of energy would still be needed. We have not yet achieved a take-off into self-sustainability.

The proteins formed would vary in their amino acid composition, the sequence of the amino acids along the polymer chain, and therefore also the conformation (the folding of the chains, overall shape, and the polar and non-polar groups displayed on the surface). There are some 20 different amino acids that compose proteins today; the assortment may have been somewhat different in the beginning, but the number was probably about the same. This would give extremely high numbers of possible combinations and permutations in the sequences (assuming they form at random), and therefore in conformations. Every time a polymerization to protein would occur, the product would be somewhat different, as in a giant lottery machine blindly seeking for a most favorable conformation. There would not yet be any RNA guiding the synthesis of specific proteins, no ribosome machinery for the assembling of amino acids - only the energy from ATP and the supply of assorted amino acids as the raw materials. The selection would be quite unguided at this point, as it needs to be to find the right combinations, which are as yet unknown. If we don't know the combination in a padlock, all we can do is dial numbers at random, hoping eventually to unlock the treasure box. It might take eons, but we have the time. (It does not take as long as the age of the universe.)

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One of these protein macromolecules some day might have the right shape for becoming an enzyme; i.e. have a "site" on its surface, a pocket of the right size and polarity, to catalyze a chemical reaction, and have at least a reasonable specificity for that one reaction only. The specificity and catalytic power might not at first be as high as that in modern enzymes of present living forms, which are very "high tech", but be sufficient though crude tools for their time. The chemical reaction catalyzed by the proto-enzyme might be some fermentation, e.g. producing energy from hydrogen sulfide or methane, as some Archeobacteria still do today. The energy from the fermentation would then charge up the ATP system which could produce more protein. It could also produce the materials for the bilipid layer for cell membranes and supply other needs. We now have a stable sustained energy supply, no longer dependent on bolts of lightning and the like; we can produce proteins rapidly, speeding up the selection of more enzymes, and improving the efficiency of previous enzymes. New and better enzymes can catalyze new and better fermentations producing more energy. We have achieved take-off to a self-sustaining, even self-accelerating cycle.  

It can feed on itself and maintain its pattern, like a true dissipative structure. It still does not "breed true" in the sense that the same enzyme may not be produced in the next polymerization, because it is unguided. Exact replication has to wait for the nucleic acids, RNA or DNA, which are not yet there. But, as Dyson says, high variability may be an advantage in the beginning, when the search for the right combinations is still on. It is only when the really excellent combinations have been found that we want to hang on to them for sure and replicate them faithfully.

In a memorable passage, Dyson talks about the boundary between life and death being very fluid at this stage, and moreover easily reversible. It would have been just as easy to originate life in repeated little jumps and revert to non-life just as repeatedly; death and resurrection as common-place recurrent events. I would compare it to the flicker in a fluorescent lamp just before it finally takes off to a steady light. (Or sometimes it doesn't.)

Besides the detailed chemistry, what is important to me is the holistic image: a strong jet of energy from the sun keeping an unstable (but hyper-stable) structure balanced at a free-energy peak. Imagine a strong air or water jet pointing vertically upward (like the famous water-jet in Geneva), with a ping pong ball balanced on top of it; the ball keeps on falling under gravity, but the jet keeps it up, dancing forever in its precarious perch way up the free-energy mountain. That is what has happened on this planet, and the sun is still keeping our ping pong ball high up, in fact ever higher over time, by its strong whoosh of energy flux. But it can do it only because the energy transfer systems are in place, the fermentations and the ATP and the amino acid polymerization and the enzymes. (Nowadays also photosynthesis and respiration, but these came later.)

By focusing both on the macro and the micro picture, the bouncing ping pong ball and the chemical cycles, the holistic and the reductionist image, we can gain an overall insight into this event of primal Genesis. It was not really a point event, but an extended historical process. Understanding of it is not only an intellectual process, but a spiritual experience. There is a "Eureka" feeling of revelation in finally but suddenly grasping the complex aspects in their totality. This is what happened on this planet! My God!

The story is, of course not complete as told. We must proceed now to the "second origin" of Dyson, the introduction of the replicator systems. I will stick quite closely to his description here, which I found very enlightening.

At the stage of protein life as described up to this point, there would have been present in the proto-cells a certain concentration of the members of the ATP system and some of its chemical cousins. We need more chemical details here: adenosine monophosphate (AMP) is an example of a nucleotide; its chemical cousins would be other nucleotides, such as uracil, guanine, thymine, or cytosine. These too might be active in energy transfer systems in the proto-cell, because they too can add extra phosphate groups and hold them by high-energy bonds. Now the nucleotides are in the same relation to nucleic acids (RNA and DNA) as amino acids are to proteins; i.e. nucleotides can be polymerized to nucleic acids like amino acids can to proteins.

Experiments by Eigen (described by Dyson) have shown that nucleotides polymerize to nucleic acid if there is a protein present to act as an enzyme for this process. So we can visualize that in an early proto-cell of protein life, an "accident" happened: an RNA was produced by a spontaneous polymerization. ("An Eigen reaction 3 billion years before Eigen did it", says Dyson.) An Eigen reaction produces an RNA with a random assortment of nucleotides (in the absence of a pre-existing RNA or DNA as a template). However, even the random RNA would have the capacity to replicate itself with high fidelity, by essentially the same base-pairing mechanisms that are now well known in molecular genetics. So the product of the "accident" would be like a highly infectious virus affecting the proto-cell and making it "sick". (Later it was also found that RNA can act as an enzyme as well as a template; this configuation is called a ribozyme.)

Like a virus, the RNA can replicate itself only inside a living cell where the appropriate enzymes are available, not outside. This is still true of modern viruses, whether of the DNA kind (most of them) or the RNA kind (retro-viruses, like HIV that causes AIDS). It has long been a puzzle for biologists to decide whether bacteria or viruses came on the scene first - in fact, whether viruses were alive at all. We may now be close to an answer: what we might call "akaryotic cells" (ones without any nucleic acids) came on the scene first, viruses second, and their union produced bacteria, i.e. prokaryotes, with which the story as told in our text books usually starts.

How did the akaryotes (what I previously here called "protocells") overcome the "sickness" introduced accidentally by the newly synthesized RNA virus? This is a case of converting a parasitic relationship (where the parasite exploits the host to the parasite's benefit and the host's disadvantage) gradually through reluctant tolerance to coexistence to adaptation and finally to symbiosis, a cooperative relationship in which both partners benefit. A zero-sum game becomes non-zero sum and then cooperative, a win-lose game goes to a win-win game.The two "origins" of life, the metabolizers and the replicators (proteins and nucleic acids), co-evolved not only to be complementary in their functions, but became so tightly coupled that they are now almost inconceivable without each other. "Overcoming your enemies by converting them into friends" has never seen a better example. DNA transcription into RNA, and RNA translation into protein, now requires specific protein catalysts (enzymes), and proteins cannot be formed other than by translation from RNA. "The Central Dogma" of molecular genetics dictates in which direction the genetic information flows, and there are few transgressions from this dogma.

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You might wonder what happened to flexibility and the random search for perfection in enzymes and - yes - the replicators themselves. Dyson has a theory, which he calls his "toy model" because it is so oversimplified, according to which it was an advantage at first to be able to tolerate a high error rate (about 20%) in copying macromolecules, because it then requires fewer types of molecules (maybe 100) to put together a smoothly working homeostatic system. With the very low error rate now achieved with RNA and DNA replication, it would need some 10,000; it would probably never get off the ground. However, the advantage is reversed later on, and very accurate replication becomes desirable. With certain enzymatic "proof-reading" and "correcting" steps, genetic information is now copied with an error rate of about 1 in a billion. (As a professional editor, I am green with envy.)

The arrival of the replicators can be seen in several ways. In the ping pong ball metaphor, it means that another big whoosh of the water jet has put the little ball sky-high above the high-entropy background, like a rocket that almost disappears from sight. We are going to increasingly less probable structures, sucking negentropy from the surroundings very greedily as we go.

Another view is that life has come under a dictatorship of the replicators; that "selfish genes" now rule the roost, not really caring about the well-being of their temporary protein envelopes as long as they can reproduce and perpetuate themselves. (This is the view of Richard Dawkins.) Genes are potentially immortal, and by a strange reversal of roles, genes are the only ones that matter; the rest is a "mortal coil" to be shuffled off and a new one found as time goes on. Some genes are even "neutral" (convey no evolutionary advantage); these are carried along as "free riders" and have been termed "junk DNA" (the non-coding portions that cannot direct the making of proteins). Some genes even "cheat": hook themselves onto successful genes to keep from being eliminated by natural selection if their gene products (proteins) prove to be disadvantageous.

Such "biological fascism" then leads to socio-biological theories of behaviours like altruism (in ants and in humans) purely on the basis of wanting to benefit one's genes. (Sociobiology theory was developed by E.O. Wilson.) I help my own child in preference to my niece or nephew, because I share more genes with my child. I do not accept the rule of selfish genes, either as a natural fact or as a rule of moral conduct. Genes are the servants of the organism, not its masters. My choice of whose life to save first in a mass drowning is the choice of my brain, not my genes - and I might well choose a genetically unrelated friend, or in fact my husband whose genes are different. Realistically, I would probably just grab whoever is closest, if I could still think straight at all under the circumstances.

The facet of the gene-protein symbiosis that I prefer to think about is the close coupling. I don't know what that means in chemical concreteness, but I am reminded of some of the authors in the "Gaia" book (Bunyard and Goldsmith) writing about the close coupling that occurred at some early point between the Earth's biota and the atmosphere/water/soil. They insist that more than co-evolution is involved; that would be a loose coupling only. Close coupling at some point became inevitable, like with a teen-age boy and girl being put in bed together naked. As with the biota and the rest of the biosphere, so with proteins and nucleic acids, close coupling was inevitable, even though the relationship began as a virus infection.

I will not pursue the story of the origin of life any further, or I would end up writing a biology text book. Even so, the events of the "double origin" that I described may well have taken more time in Earth's history than the rest of evolution, with its myriad different life forms. As with so many phenomena, the beginnings are the hardest.

Only one more question: was the development of life on Earth inevitable? Being such an improbable event, or series of events, I don't think so; things could have gone otherwise, even under the favorable circumstances we had here. The experiment could still end, as it almost did in the Great Permian Extinction. But I refrain from speculating - this time - about ends. This essay is about origins only.

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"Oh", said Goldilocks, "this bowl of porridge is too hot. And this one is too cold. But that one is just right." And she ate it all up. Then one bed was too hard, the second one was too soft, but the third one was just right. So she curled up in it and went to sleep.

It seems that Goldilocks tends to avoid extremes, prefers to sail right down the middle. In this, the little girl is representative of life in general. Life thrives on Earth because of its middle position. But life also prefers middle positions on many other scales. Let us review a few of them.

Life must avoid the extremes of boiling and freezing; i.e. it seeks the middle range of the temperatures at which water is a liquid at atmospheric pressure. (The latter is an Earth-bound concept, but never mind.) The optimum is about 25 degrees C. The range of air and water temperatures suitable for life then has to stay between about -40 and +40 degrees C. This range is rather narrow, and Earth temperature has probably been regulated for billions of years by Gaian mechanisms to stay within this range.

The requirement, implied above, that water must be in the liquid state can be seen as another generalization: life is between the extreme rigidity of a solid and the extreme tenuousness of a gas, mainly in the flexible but stable state of matter characterized as liquid. Solids and gases are utilized by life processes, e.g. skeletal support and breathing by lungs; but most of the process goes on in liquid or semi-liquid phases, aqueous or oily.

Being between water and oil phases is another dimension of life. Oil and water do not mix, of course, so they form two distinct liquid phases. Life not only utilizes both phases, but actively exploits phenomena at the interface of the two. Some parts of proteins are hydrophilic and other parts are lipophilic (or hydrophobic), which helps to determine the structure and function of these building blocks of life. Cell membranes are hydrophilic on both inner and outer surfaces and lipophilic inside, being composed of a bilayer of fatty acids with their polar groups pointing outwards into the aqueous media in both extra-cellular and intra-cellular space. In general, polar groups (with either electric charges or electric dipoles) are hydrophilic (e.g. COOH or NH₂), purely covalent groups like long hydrocarbon chains are lipophilic.

Various other redox systems are also active in life processes; e.g. the central iron atom in hemoglobin is in the Fe+3 state in the oxygenated form and in the Fe+2 state in the reduced form; this enables hemoglobin to function as an oxygen-transporting molecule.

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Again, life does best in the middle range between extreme acidity and extreme alkalinity, in a pH range between 6 and 8. Maintaining the pH of the blood at a steady middle-range value is one of the prototypes of homeostasis.

Carbon itself is in the middle (in a left-to-right sense) of the periodic table of the elements. The metals are on the left and the non-metals on the right. Extreme metals (like sodium) tend to combine with extreme non-metals (like chlorine) with an electrovalent bond, as in sodium chloride. Carbon, as an element in the middle, tends to form covalent bonds with non-metals, as well as with itself - hence the ability of carbon to form long chains and rings, and therefore large enough molecules to introduce enough complexity to support life.

Under carbon in the periodic table is silicon, which possibly will get to support a new form of life if computers prove to be capable of artificial intelligence. But this is really based on a different property of silicon, not its ability to bond with itself like carbon. However, this property of silicon is again a "middle" property, namely semiconductivity. As the name indicates, semiconductors like silicon are halfway between electrical conductors (mainly metals) and electrical insulators (mainly non-metals).

While carbon is in the middle of the short period Li (lithium) to F (fluorine) (atomic numbers 3 to 8), the transition metals, (like Fe (iron) which functions in hemoglobin, Cu (copper) in the blood of crustaceans, Mg (magnesium) in chlorophyll, Zn (zinc) in a transcription promoter, and others are in the middle in the longer 18-member periods further down. As indicated by the examples, some of the transition metals function as parts of enzymes and other biological catalysts, particularly because of the variability of their oxidation states, i.e. multiple valence. This is why we need traces of these transition elements as "minerals" in our diets.

Turning now to mental states, life runs between hyper-activity and catatonia, in an equilibrium between mania and depression. An accidental disturbance of this equilibrium may produce an oscillation between the extremes: manic-depressive or "bipolar" disease. It is as if a single attractor split into two attractors, just prior to chaos. A healthy state of mind shows only a mild oscillation (like a thermostat), if any at all. There is a similar equilibrium between chronic anxiety and placidity, between phrenetic political activism and apathy, between frenzy and drowsiness. Many of these polar opposites are linked to levels of particular neurotransmitters in the brain, such as serotonin and adrenalin, high levels usually tending to overactivity and deficiencies to underactivity. With respect to the neurotransmitter dopamine, an excess is linked to schizophrenia (and sometimes to chorea), while a deficiency is linked to Parkinson's disease. It seems that at one extreme there is too much muscle movement and at the other extreme too little of it.

The above can be further generalized. In chorea there is too little inhibition of spontaneous involuntary movements, while in Parkinsonism there is too much inhibition even of voluntary movement. This stimulation vs. inhibition polarity is the very basis of all neural mechanisms. Connections at synapses between neurons can be either excitatory or inhibitory, and both are necessary for proper balance.

Similarly, our bodies have two kinds of autonomous (involuntary) nervous systems: the sympathetic, which stimulates (e.g. constricts blood vessels, increases the heart rate - like adrenalin in the fight-or-flight reflex); and the parasympathetic, which has the opposite effects. It seems that the two systems keep each other in balance. "Checks and balances" are built in, to prevent overstepping the limits of Goldilocks' middle band where healthy life resides.

Let us turn briefly now to politics. The polarity between activism and apathy has already been mentioned. The trouble with extreme activism is that it might lead to too much conflict, and possibly violence. This it would do by producing a bi-modal distribution of political views within a nation, which means polarization; this is like a bifurcation in a cusp catastrophe diagram. (See essay on "Swallowtail and Butterfly".) This situation would be prone to wide swings from one extreme political regime to another at consecutive elections (or revolutions if the system is not democratic), with resultant instability. The opposite of extreme activism, namely extreme apathy, also has dire results: a docile population will passively accept dictatorship and tyranny; democracy would be impossible, the result probably being oppression and deprivation of basic human rights. A healthy political system, one which avoids the extremes of disorder and violence, on the one hand, and injustice on the other, is again Goldilocks' middle range. There we could hope to realize the values of order, peace and justice simultaneously.

Political opposition movements must also avoid their Scylla and Charybdis; i.e. avoid too much zeal (never trust the government to cooperate with it) while also avoiding cooptation (i.e. trust the government too much). The political parties in Palestine in Jesus' time were called the Zealots and the Herodians (who cooperated with King Herod, who was subservient to Rome, thus hoping to obtain independence from Rome by this route). They are the prototypes for streams of thought in many contemporary movements. In our time, we fluctuate in our treatment of oppressive regimes: apartheid South Africa, China, Burma, Nigeria, Cuba... ; is it better to engage in punitive economic sanctions or "constructive engagement"?

One more example will suffice: In the Green Party of Germany, there are two factions: the Fundis (adhering to fundamentals and keeping them pure by not cooperating with other parties) and the Realos ("realists" who do cooperate with others in order to obtain political power and achieve at least some of their aims). In peace plans, ecological improvement plans, or indeed any reform plans, this tension is often felt: (1) should we make the plan far-reaching enough to be truly effective if implemented, although such a plan probably will not be acceptable and therefore not implemented; or (2) should we formulate a plan which has a chance of being accepted and implemented, but which would not be completely effective because it does not go far enough. The desirable middle ground is very difficult to find, as any social reformer knows; yet that is where true effectiveness dwells.

Goldilocks developed a feeling for what is "just right" by experimenting and rejecting extremes. It is impossible to define that golden middle ground in the abstract, especially in politics and psychology. (In biochemistry, the experiments were performed by nature aeons ago.) So we end up zig-zagging somewhat, like a thermostat, between the permissible limits. We go through a stormy "crisis" when approaching the frenzy limit, and follow by a quiet plateau when headed for the catatonic limit. (Cf. essay "The Rise and Run" ) Radicals and conservatives should take their turns at the helm. But we must beware of those limits. Those who exceeded them are with us no more.

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This is a comment on Erich Neumann's book. He comments on the tale by Lucius Apuleius, taken from "The Golden Ass". His is a Freudian/Jungian interpretation. I present a different one, in terms of my interest in the origin of life. In my view, different interpretations show the richness of meaning in myths. I do not deny or dispute Neumann, I only choose a different facet or strain which is also present in Psyche.

In the myth, Psyche is asked by Aphrodite (whose son, Amor or Eros, has become Psyche's husband which made Aphrodite angry) to perform four tasks, all extremely difficult, almost impossible. Psyche almost gives up and kills herself before attempting each one, but is cheered on and advised by various entities, a different one in each case, to carry on. The theme of heroic tasks appears in many myths and fairy tales, but these are usually performed by male heroes. Here they are done by Psyche, depicted as a simple and naive young girl. Also there are usually three tasks, but here there are four.

In the first task, Psyche was presented with a heap of seeds, "corn and barley and millet and poppy seed and chick peas and lentils and beans, all jumbled and confused in one heap", and told to sort them out. This nearly impossible task of working against entropy and the Second Law, of being in fact a Maxwell demon, could not be done by the purely human Psyche; but friendly ants came to her aid - because of their large numbers, they were able to sort the heap of seeds on time. This is of course the same task that Cinderella was given by her stepmother and ugly sisters, and she also received non-human help (her fairy godmother) in performing the task.

I take this to represent the stage in the development of life when there were many randomly sequenced peptides and nucleic acids, and they had to be sorted out to find the combinations that would "work" to produce functioning proteins, RNAs and DNAs to construct the first living cells. The ants might be primitive enzymes, imperfect but numerous, that accomplished the task in far less time than pure chance would take to do it.

In the second task, Psyche was asked to clip a wisp of golden fleece from the fierce sheep grazing near the river. At mid-day these beasts were powerful and would have torn her apart if she approached them at high noon. But the reeds growing in the river advised Psyche to wait till night time, and then pluck the pieces of wool that the sheep left on the branches of near-by trees, without approaching the sheep directly. This part of the Psyche myth reminds us of the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, and also of such fairy tales as plucking the three golden hairs of the sleeping giant.

This task represents the harnessing of solar energy by living creatures through photosynthesis. The Sun's heat is too fierce to be approached directly, but through intricate chemical mechanisms the process of transferring the Sun's energy gradually to living systems without harming or disrupting them can be carried out. The "inventors" of photosynthesis are the blue-green bacteria, sometimes called "algae", and the further developers of it are the green (true) algae, which are related to reeds (Psyche's helpers in this task). The trees on which the golden rays of the Sun were caught are a further reference to photosynthesizing plants.

Psyche's third task was to bring down a cup of water from a waterfall going over a mountain cliff; this site was guarded by fierce dragons, besides being almost inaccessible. An eagle came to Psyche's rescue and filled the small urn with the "Stygian water" (so called in the tale) for her.

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This could represent the invention of circulation, of blood in animals and sap in plants, which conveys nutrients and wastes each to their proper places. Circulation via aqueous "juices" is necessary for the functioning of multicellular creatures, both animals and plants. The eagle represents the steep upward swing of multicellular creatures in the early Cambrian - the invertebrates and the vascular plants (first ferns).

Psyche's fourth task was to visit the underworld and obtain a box filled with Persephone's own magic ointment. In her despair she was advised by the tower. She managed the difficult and dangerous trip to the Realm of Death by obeying all the complicated precautions and injunctions taught her by the tower, but then lost everything by opening the box and releasing its hidden evils - somewhat like Pandora with her box and Eve in Eden with her discovery of Good and Evil. Forbidden things and broken tabus abound in folk literature; sometimes a door to a secret room not to be opened, sometimes a name not to be asked about as in Lohengrin - or even in Psyche's own tale, not asking about the identity of her lover (an injunction which she broke to her sorrow earlier on).

This fourth task represents the invention by life on Earth of the close-coupled phenomena of death and sex. By visiting the underworld is meant the passage of life forms through the soil (dust unto dust, ashes to ashes) to re-emerge as new life, fashioned by the hereditary mechanisms of sexual reproduction. Psyche succumbed to this powerful knowledge of good and evil after obtaining the secret, and had to be revived by Eros, Love Himself.

The Tower is card No. 16 in the Major Arcana of the Tarot cards. Using Jane Lyle's book "Tarot", we garner the following clues: (1) The associated planet being Mars, the symbol is the standard symbol for Male (circle with an arrow pointed North-East). (2) On the card, lightning strikes the tower and the people who were in it are dashed to the ground. It is without doubt an image of death, though the explanatory text tries to soft-pedal this by talking about sudden change. (3) The quotation at the head of the article is from Alfred North Whitehead, "Adventures in Ideas": "It is the business of the future to be dangerous...The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur."

Without a doubt, Psyche (and the life on Earth which she represents) flirted with death when visiting the underworld (denying immortality to the somatic cells of multicellular creatures), and actually succumbed to death on opening the Pandora box (finding the secret). But Life is thereafter always resurrected by the Kiss of Eros (like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and Brunhilde).

Thus Psyche reiterates the developmental stages of life on Earth, as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

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The story to be described is somewhat hypothetical, since no one really knows what happened. In this brief outline, no archeological or anthropological evidence will be offered. The account is therefore only a tentative hypothesis, but it will be written as a story, a myth.

Once upon a time, people saw mothers as the only givers of new life, since they were the only ones visibly to do so. At this stage, the mother's role in reproduction was seen as 100%, the father's as zero. The child came entirely from the mother's flesh and blood. The natural consequence would be a matrilineal society, tracing ancestry through the female line only. Possibly this even led to matriarchy, a society ruled by women; but not necessarily so, since women were too busy bringing up children and men could spend the time between hunts on politics.

When the father's role in reproduction was "discovered" (if there ever was such a time - was this not always known through uninterrupted animal memory?), two interpretations were possible. One (mentioned in an essay by Malinowski) was that sexual intercourse only widens the passage into a woman's womb, so that the spirit of an ancestor can enter. This belief is linked to belief in the transmigration of souls and the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh; it is the spirit or soul of the new child that matters, not its body, and the origin of that soul that is to be explained.

The other interpretation was that the father implants the seed and the mother's womb is only the garden in which it sprouts. Mother provides the nutrients and the environment, but the vital spark (we might now say the genetic instructions) all come from the father. One image used was the Sun (usually a male god) bringing forth crops from Mother Earth (always a female goddess). We have now made a complete switch: the genetic contribution comes 100% from the father, zero from the mother.

This interpretation would lead to a patrilineal society, tracing ancestry through the male line, either introducing or confirming patriarchy, a male-ruled and dominated society. This is a total flip, a profound paradigm shift. From the Sun-Earth metaphor just mentioned, it seems that this might have occurred with the beginning of agriculture, the same time that saw the beginning of war and slavery. This is in agreement with the account given by Riane Eisler in "The Chalice and the Sword".

If patrilineal belief were one root of patriarchy, its other root was more utilitarian: women were too busy with child-bearing and child-rearing to engage in hunting, war and politics, the perennial concerns of men. (Sports may be added in modern times.) These male preoccupations entailed long absences from home. Women worked hard at gathering and later at agriculture, which could be done from a home base.

With modern science, the role of the sexes in reproduction was clarified. The belief now changed to regarding the genetic contribution of mother and father as equal. Each contributed exactly half of the genes to the child, and the dominant or recessive nature of each allele (that actually expressed in the phenotype) was equally likely to come from mother and father. Do we then get an androgynous society (social equality of the sexes)? Not quite. Not in reality (which remains patriarchal) nor in myth, which leans toward a superior role for women.

Mother's role is greater than the father's because, while both contribute equally to the genetic endowment of the child, mother also still retains the nutritive or nurturant function during pregnancy and lactation. Even at the gamete stage, the egg is much larger than the sperm, and provided with nutrients for the first few cell divisions following fertilization. Eggs are produced in smaller numbers, but with greater care (K strategy), while sperms are produced in great profusion but provided with only the bare essentials and many of them defective (R strategy).   

The K and R strategy paradigm is usually applied to different reproductive strategies among different species, where the K strategy (small numbers of progeny but great parental care, as in birds or mammals) is considered superior to the R strategy (large numbers of progeny with no care provided, so that only a few survive, as among fish or reptiles). However, this paradigm can be transferred to the difference between human gametes, and makes the female role somewhat superior even at this stage. However, it is the very reproductive superiority of women which continues to bar them from social positions with high social status, unless child care is delegated to other social agencies or the number of children produced is less, as seems to be called for now in an overcrowded world. When our ideology is no longer pro-natalist ("go forth and multiply..."), we have a chance of approaching an androgynous world (Riane Eisler's "partnership").

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Up to this point, our story has gone through a classical dialectical sequence: Thesis - 100% female; antithesis - 100% male; synthesis - 50-50 mix, but not quite, in both biological and social terms. But the story does not end there.

A recent discovery showed that even the genetic contributions are not equal. The mitochondria in each cell, which carry on aerobic respiration, have their own set of genes. Mitochondria are present in the more highly developed egg, but absent from the bare-bones sperm. Therefore the child's mitochondria are inherited entirely from the mother. While this is a minor part of the genetic endowment of the child, it nevertheless changes the balance of the sexes from 50-50 to one somewhat favouring women. Through genetic sequencing of mitochondria, human descent was recently traced to an "African Eve" - necessarily a woman because mitochondria were involved. (However, even more recently, this conclusion has been contested.)

Moreover, there is the different contribution of the X and Y chromosomes to the child's genetic endowment. A woman has the XX combination, which means that the genes on this chromosome are fully backed up by alleles. A man has the XY combination, and the Y is much shorter, which means that some of the genes are not backed up. This leads to the greater frequency of genetic disorders among men, such as hemophilia and colour blindness, while women are only carriers, without symptoms. This is because the genes for the defects are recessive, and if there is another allele to back it up and it is normal, the normal one becomes dominant and is expressed. But if there is no back-up allele, the recessive defective gene has to be expressed. Possibly this is also one reason why women live longer than men. More women die in childbirth in primitive societies, but more men die in war, which might just about equalize the survival situation. However, in modern times, very few women die in childbirth, but more die in wars, since civilian deaths in wars now greatly out-number military deaths.

That kind of society goes with these changed perceptions? Perhaps a mitigation of patriarchy, though not too much while its practical roots persist. But when the need for large families disappeared in late industrial society and women joined the labour force in large numbers, a women's movement for social equality began to erase patriarchy. This transition still continues. Whether or not the mitochondrial knowledge will penetrate the popular psyche enough to actually lean toward matriarchy is doubtful. "Partnership" would seem to be the best solution.

Will it be back full-circle to pre-agricultural times? If so, perhaps the other curses of civilization, war and slavery, can be abolished too. Slavery already has been. Can war be abolished too, as the predominant occupation of men? As we have fewer children, will we take better care of them (in a K strategy) and not send them to war? If so, we will have learned a lot from women.  

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Source

The Creation of Man by Prometheus

Prometheus and Epimetheus were spared imprisonment in Tatarus because they had not fought with their fellow Titans during the war with the Olympians. They were given the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure.

Prometheus had assigned Epimetheus the task of giving the creatures of the earth their various qualities, such as swiftness, cunning, strength, fur, wings. Unfortunately, by the time he got to man Epimetheus had given all the good qualities out and there were none left for man. So Prometheus decided to make man stand upright as the gods did and to give them fire.

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