By Terry Willard ClH, PhD(as presented at the Canadian Herb Conference Nov 7, 2020)

To get a good understanding of how botanical remedies really work in us two-legged, over-intellectualized meat computers, {1,2} we have to go way back in our history. I mean way back, to the beginning of our existence. Even though in our present forms we seem quite intelligent, mobile and rulers of our earthly realm, it was not always this way. What are we as biological beings?

A great and growing volume of facts about life as it goes on about usand within us becomes available for practical application … [But] this new material is still imperfectly accessible to ordinary busy people.

This quote is a good description of biology’s situation at the beginning of the 21st century. However, it was written almost 100 years ago by H. G. Wells, in his book The Science of Life. {3}

(1929–30, giving a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It has been called “the first modern textbook of biology”) 

Though life as we know it developed relatively late in the universe’s history, the origins of Earth and the Universe are important to fully understanding the pattern. The universe is between 10 and 20 billion years old and said to have begun at a moment called the Big Bang. The current scientific community considers the Universe starting with the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. The Maya state 16.7 billion years ago on Stele 26 in Coba, Mexico.  I trust the Maya version more, but they are both at least in the same order of magnitude. 

Our Sun is about 5 billion years old. The Earth was formed from an accumulation of cosmic dust about 4.6 billion years ago. The early Earth, shortly after its formation, was an inhospitable place that could not have supported “life” by any definition we might use today. However, 3.5 billion years ago (approximately 1 billion years after its formation), the Earth was teeming with life in the form of organisms that resemble modern-day bacteria. This development was extremely fast, especially considering that the molten Earth needed half a billion years to cool enough to form a solid rock surface. Some biologists now think that there is evidence for life even earlier, at about 4 billion years ago. In any case, life appeared on Earth as soon as it was possible. 

1. Most scientists now think that life arose spontaneously from non-living matter. 
2. Many religions believe that life was bestowed on non-living Earth by a deity. 
3. Some scientists suggest the panspermia hypothesis, which says that the original life on Earth arrived here from another planet. 

Both of these last 2 alternatives, ignore the question of how living matter could emerge from nonliving matter. The first does not fit into a vitalist’s concept, but the others do.

Most scientists now think that life arose spontaneously from non-living matter.

Arising spontaneously from non-living matter {4} – In the 1920s, Alexander Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane suggested that Earth’s early atmosphere had little oxygen—that it was composed primarily of hydrogen, methane, and ammonia. This composition would be conducive to spontaneous production of organic molecules. Stanley Miller (in 1952, U of Chicago) tried to reproduce early Earth conditions with an apparatus that used heated water in one flask (the “ocean”) and another flask (the “atmosphere”) that contained hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor. {5} Miller also exposed the gases in the “atmosphere” to electrical energy to mimic lightning, volcanism, and ultraviolet radiation. Within a few days, Miller’s apparatus had synthesized a wide range of organic compounds, including such complex ones as amino and nucleic acids. Research following Miller’s original experiment has shown that all major classes of organic compounds can be synthesized under early Earth conditions. However, molecules synthesized this way are still rather simple compared to the compounds that make up living things. Besides the ability to synthesize more complex compounds, three additional things are required to create life: 

1. We need to be able to make more of any compound at any time, without relying on random chemistry, which may not (by its own doctrine) produce the same compound every time
2. We need a method of combining and organizing compounds into larger functional units
3. We need to find a way to accumulate and store energy, because living things do not rely on lightning or volcanism to power themselves.

Another characteristic of living systems is that they are organized in a hierarchical fashion, from molecules to cells, to organisms, to communities of species, to ecosystems and Biosphere. At the same time, three unifying principles that cut across all levels of organization form a useful way to look at systems as a whole.

1.  Information and Evolution, which explores how the structure and organization of living things is encoded in the DNA molecule, how this information is transmitted and modified, and the implications of these processes for understanding life at all scales of organization. 
2. Development and Homeostasis which considers two related issues for understanding the workings of complex organisms: how single cells (i.e., fertilized eggs) proliferate and transform into complex, multicellular organisms and how the various parts of complex organisms remain coordinated and maintain their integrity in the face of various challenges. 
3. Energy and Resources, which explains how living systems obtain the energy and other materials needed to maintain their highly ordered state and the implications of these processes for understanding the organization of biology at all levels of scale. This principle is especially interesting because it dictates the structure of all levels of organization.

From my point of view, this randomly arising spontaneously from non-living matter is completely unsupportable. Life cannot just be a random accident of chemicals running into each other. Even though it is the basis of most scientific timelines, it just doesn’t hold up. Upset for the non-vitalists. 

Deity

Many cultures and religions have creation stories that include a single or a group of Deities, breathing the breath of life into non-living matter to animate Life.Many cultures and religions have creation stories that include a single or a group of Deities, breathing the breath of life into non-living matter to animate Life.

A group of Scientists tell God that they can make life without God, so he can now retire. He/She/It is not needed anymore. They go about giving a demonstration. ‘First, we take water and dirt . . .’, God interrupts. ‘Wait a second, use your own water and soil’.

Panspermia Hypothesis

Well we are not going to solve which of these mechanisms or combinations started the evolutionary climb to today’s life, so we can put a pin in trying to figure out ‘who cut down the cherry tree’ and look at the process itself.

But let us say 2 wins for the vitalists and 0 for the non-vitalist.

So somewhere around 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago the earth started teaming with one-celled organism. It was at about the 2 billion years ago that the first Eukaryotic cells– cells with internal “organs” (known as organelles) – come into being. One key organelle is the nucleus: the control centre of the cell, in which the genes are stored in the form of DNA.

It wasn’t until about 900 million yearsago that the first multi-cell organism arose. This means that over 75% of the length of the existence of life on this planet has been as single-celled organisms. 

When taking a giant step backward and looking at the timeline; it is evident that evolution is the driving force moving life towards creating ecosystems. This would mean there is an underlying communication system (signal) guiding the process. 

Looking at microorganisms as over 75% of this process, and also due to the fact that multicell organisms have an abundance of microorganism (in their personal ecosystem) that there has to be some form of communication both intraspecies and interspecies. This signaling system seems to be key to our whole question. 

It is All about Signalling

To be Continued . . . How Medicines Work in Part 2

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1.Stephen Nowicki; Biology: The Science of Life; The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2004 The Great Courses

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/discovery-institute-are-humans-simply-meat-machines-300865749.html

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbsNVH6ceNw

3. H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley and G. P. Wells, published in three volumes by The Waverley Publishing Company Ltd

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/discovery-institute-are-humans-simply-meat-machines-300865749.html

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