Lotka's Jabberwock 7

The draft Flickr coverslide to Libb Thims' 28 Jun BPE 2016 talk: Lotka’s Jabberwock: on the ‘Bio’ of BioPhysical Economics, at the University of District of Columbia, Washington, DC, showing the gist of Alfred Lotka's 1925 "Regarding Definitions" chapter, wherein he states that in the future of exact sciences, the term "life" will meet its fate, and become a defunct term.

In hmolscience, Lotkean Jabberwocky refers to any work, theory, or argument produced by a physio-chemical and or chemical thermodynamics based scientist that attempts to either explain or define life and or define or find the origin of life.

Overview

In 1871, Lewis Carroll penned a nonsense poem called “Jabberwocky”, about the killing of a creature named “the Jabberwock”, which was included with his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. [2]

In 1925, Alfred Lotka, in his "Regarding Definitions", explained that a physical chemical scientists who goes looking for the "origin of life" or physical definition of life is someone hunting a scientific Jabberwock.

On 28 Jun 2016, Libb Thims, in his "Lotka's Jabberwock: on the ‘Bio’ of BioPhysical Economics", a talk given during the 7th BioPhysical Economics conference (see: BPE 2016), discussed the defunct theory of life, life does not exist, and life terminology upgrade reformation, centered on Alfred Lotka’s 1925 chapter “Regarding Definitions”, the coiner of the term “biophysical economics”, wherein he posits, with sharp foresight, that in the future, in the literature of the exact sciences, the term “life” will become “wholly unnecessary” and that the scholar who goes searching for the “origin of life” is but someone hunting for Lewis Carol’s Jabberwock, i.e. a nonsense fictional entity. [1]

Abstract
The following is the working abstract of Thims' talk:

“The ‘B’ of BPE is not recognized by the ‘P’. Biology, as Lotka (1925) — the coiner of BPE — classified as a Jabberwocky-like ‘nonsense’ term, as Sherrington (1938) said is ‘not’ recognized by ‘P’, and as Crick (1966) — the co-discoverer of DNA — said should be ‘abandoned’, is not recognized by physics, thermodynamics, in particular, and therefore in immediate need of terminology reform. Thermodynamics, according to the Johnstone-Pavlovich rule, applies to some things and not to others, and the things which it does not apply are unreal and do not exist. Life, in short, is a ‘thing’ (fictional concept) that is not real and does not exist. Concept and terminology reform, accordingly, is in order.”

An historical abstract of Thims' talk is available in the "life" section of the does not exist article.

Videos
The following are videos to be shown, in part (shown by time demarcations), in the talk:

● Rogers, Alfred. (2016). “Why Life Does Not Exist” (V|2:20-9:03), Jun 1 | Play: after "Abioism" slide (#17).
● Thims, Libb. (2016). “Walking Molecules: Philosophical Implications” (V|1:18-4:09), Human Chemistry 101, May 24 | Play: after "name" slide (#).

Preliminary
In 2011, Nathan Brown (UC Davis) and Petar Milat (MaMa) organized a "To Have Done With Life" conference, at Zagreb, Croatia, which contain preliminary aspects of Thims' talk, albeit presented in a less progressive manner; the following introduction text by Brown in particular.

“The problem of “emergence” is that a modality of being came to be which was not before, and the difficulty is that tracking the physical causes of such an event leads to irresolvable aporia (Ѻ). And these aporia are too easily dissembled through reference to ‘complex, self-organizing processes,’ as if we can at once account for and evade the radicality of the event we are trying to think by placing it within the same category as the formation of snowflakes, traffic patterns, or the activities of termite colonies. In its typical usage — the work of Stuart Kauffman, for example — the concept of ‘emergence’ is a crypto-metaphysical concept pretending to offer physical explanations, at once allowing and accounting for gaps in the latter through reference to ‘complexity’.”

The following diagrammatic timeline of auto-catalytic closure like arguments gets to the gist of Brown's statement; namely that some, such as: Sergius Morgulis (1952), Tibor Ganti (1974), and Stuart Kauffman (1995), have posted that the following linear chemical mechanism in going form non-living to living things:

which most conceptualize as the basic origin of life problem, can be resolved by using a combination of: (a) reaction feedback + (b) autocatalysis (products that catalyze reactants) arguments:

Morgulis \| 1952	Ganti \| 1974	Kauffman \| 1995

All of which, however, after picking through the various convoluted "free energy" arguments, reduce to but perpetual motion arguments, perpetual motion of the living kind specifically:

This is where the 2011 conference ended.

Beyond | 2011
In the 2016 conference, Thims will go beyond this stopping point, and explain what things look like from the other side of the fence, i.e. the life does not exist perspective, namely when one comes to the correct view that "life", like "ether" or "caloric", is a thing (or concept) that does not exist, according to modern exact science, as Lotka prophesized nearly a century ago. If, accordingly, a would-be-science such as "Bio-Physical Economics", or any bio-related science, for that matter, e.g. biophysics, biochemistry, biothermodynamics, biology, etc., desires to become an "exact science", addressing this deeply rooted problem becomes paramount. Thims will give an historical overview of this problem and give working examples of how this problem has been solved in articles submitted to the Journal of Human Thermodynamics, encyclopedia articles of Hmolpedia, published video lectures, and other areas, much of which is summarized in the life terminology reform article.

Quotes
The following are related quotes:

“I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so.”
— Henry Mencken (1925), attributed; said by E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly), of the Baltimore Herald, patterned after Mencken (Ѻ), in: Inherent in the Wind (1960), the film remake of the Scopes Monkey Trail, in response to query as to "why he bothers" (Ѻ), him and his newspaper, dealing with this religious legal trickery

“Jewish and Muslim scholars regard ‘life’ as starting at 40 days.”
— Jane Maienschien (2002), “What’s in a Name?” (Ѻ); cited by Jane Bennett (2010), one of the goads of the 2011 To Have Done with Life conference, in Vibrant Matter (pg. 147), in respect to atheism labels

See also
● Death does not exist

References
1. Thims, Libb. (2016). “Lotka’s Jabberwock: on the ‘Bio’ of BioPhysical Economics” (slides: Flickr), 7th BioPhysical Economics meeting, University of District of Columbia, Washington DC, Jun 28.
2. Jabberwocky – Wikipedia.