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Why We Should Care About Universal Biology

  • Thematic Issue Article: Astrobiology
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Abstract

Our understanding of the universe has grown rapidly in recent decades. We’ve discovered evidence of water in nearby planets, discovered planets outside our solar system, mapped the genomes of thousands of organisms, and probed the very origins and limits of life. The scientific perspective of life-as-it-could-be has expanded in part by research in astrobiology, synthetic biology, and artificial life. In the face of such scientific developments, we argue there is an ever-growing need for universal biology, life-as-it-must-be, the multidisciplinary study of non-contingent aspects of life as guided by biological theory and constrained by the universe. We present three distinct but connected ways of universalizing biology—with respect to characterizing aspects of life everywhere, with respect to the explanatory scope of biological theory, and with respect to extending biological insights to the structure of nonbiological entities. For each of these, we sketch the theoretical goals and challenges, as well as give examples of current research that might be labeled universal biology.

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Notes

  1. As an anonymous reviewer points out, this section accepts the scientific interest of biologists as demarcating biology. Baryons are largely irrelevant to the features biologists study, so they would not be investigated within universal biology, but thermodynamics may yield many interesting principles of ecology, for example.

  2. He soon retracted the statement, saying, “I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation” (Popper 1978, p. 345).

  3. This discussion is slippery, as epigenetics and other relevant terms (e.g., plasticity, niche construction) are sometimes used in a nontechnical, metaphorical sense. We try to use only the specific understanding of epigenetic inheritance as described in Laland et al. 2015: chemical changes that alter DNA expression but not the underlying sequence.

  4. This may be a direct consequence of his definition of life—neither very ordered nor disordered systems can complete “work cycles.”

  5. As an anonymous reviewer points out, McShea’s theory is very much compatible with R.E. Ulanowicz’s (2003) notion of “ascendancy,” which refers to autocatalytic forms, and the idea that the complexity of configurations and reactions among molecules can help explain the emergence of life.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kelly C. Smith and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA

      Carlos Mariscal

    2. Department of Philosophy, Utica College, Utica, NY, USA

      Leonore Fleming

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    Correspondence to Carlos Mariscal.

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    Mariscal, C., Fleming, L. Why We Should Care About Universal Biology. Biol Theory 13, 121–130 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-017-0280-8

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