Section 10 of Chapter 2:
A simple distinction between vegetables and animals
A contribution to the understanding of evolution
This is a very important in order to understand why life did come out of
matter.
I am very much simplifying the whole story, but the goal is to give something to
think about. In the evolution of the universe there are many important steps
separated by million of years. Living beings need a lot of chemistry, obviously.
We know that the elements in the very well known table are created during
super-nova explosions and thus in processes which are connected with the stars.
It tooks also a lot of time before those elements have been produced and distributed
all over the space. Also thanks to gravity we had the building of planet around stars.
We do not know the whole story, but we know from our experience that the presence
of water is fundamental for the building of life as we know it on earth.
It is important to know here that some chemical reactions have a stronger probability
to happens then others. Thus the generation of elementary building blocks for a more
complex chemistry seems to be generally accepted in science. I do not want to enter
into a discussion about chemistry, because my goal is another. I just need this kind
of introduction for a better understanding of what I will say later.
One important step in evolution has been the appareance of membranes,
usually a chain of lipoid molecules. Thank to this it was then possible to build a drop,
and I means here that the membrane could build a structure which is topologically
a sphere. The important point is here that for the first time we have an
inside and an outside!! Thus the membrane
can work as a gatekeeper, allowing an higher concentration of some molecules
inside, and thus enhancing the probability of certain chemical reactions.
Making a hughe time-lap we can see that inside those topologically spheres
(the real shape does not matter) one day we had chlorophille. This is also an
important step, because this means that those cells can convert the solar energy
(the light from the sun) into sugar using water and CO2. From sugar you can get energy.
Another important step was the symbiosis in which those
cells with chlorophille find protection "inside" other cells, giving
an evolutionary advantage to them.
We can easily see that from those cells the branch of the vegetables took origin.
Interessant is here to realise that topologically vegetables are like spheres:
everything "enter" the body through the membrane.
(I know that there are carnivore plants: let consider just the bulk of the plants)
Now let consider another evolutionary step in the evolution of multicellular
beings: from the sphere to the torus: we now have a hole!
Better is to imagine a hole cylinder with a thick wall: we have now an
inlet which we can see as the mouth, and an outlet.
Thus the nutrients have first to enter the "mouth" and inside they can
be processed and then enter the body through the membranes of the inside wall, which
may (is) very different from the outside wall (the "skin").
We now see the basic difference between vegetables, which are topologically
spheres and animals, which are topologically a torus.
We can also use this as another criterium to help for a sharper division between
vegetables and animals.
Work in progress .... sorry about that, be patient please.
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