Introduction: Why Self 5“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanityand introspective aspects of life, and allows me to cross the boundary
from science to philosophy and humanity.
What about the more abstract idea of a “replicator” as the cen-
ter of life? In Dawkins’ original theory, genes compete by the speed of
multiplication, and the faster ones win the race. However, competition
by abundance alone is not the theme of life, as unlimited replication
does not guarantee long-term preservation. There are natural events
that, once started, propagate without an end in sight. Combustion and
nuclear chain reaction are prime examples. Absent self-sustainability,
they die out as the reactants exhaust. In the animate world, nothing rep-
licates faster than a malignant tumor cell, but without a mechanism for
self-regulation or a way to integrate into a larger self within the host,
the race only leads to its eventual demise — dying heirless as the host
perishes. By contrast, all normal living things express a unified “goal” of
achieving long-term existence. Replication is just one of the means to
achieve it. To say that life can be reduced to a replicator is not so much
wrong as inadequate.
The chapters in this book are organized along the evolutionary line.
At each stage of evolution, I explain how self is constructed and how it
is expressed. Chapter 3 briefly presents the chemistry of the living pro-
cess and how life, and self, emerged from the inanimate world — what
we know and what remains to be discovered. In this chapter I stress
the simultaneous appearance of self and life, since at this primeval stage
the two are almost the same. Chapter 4 discusses how “self” manifests
as simple survival instincts in unicellular organisms, such as bacterial
defense against invading viruses, and the engulfing of edible particles
by an amoeba. I point out in Chapter 5 how plants, usually taken, mis-
takenly, as passive and indolent, also express a self in the form of defense
and communication in times of health and disease. Chapter 6 discusses
how, in animals, immunity distinguishes “self” from “non-self” by strictly
molecular recognition, and why your body tries to drive out other people’s
organs when they are transplanted into you. Chapter 7 outlines how the
development of the nervous system gradually, in evolution time, brings