What is the oscillator conjecture?

The oscillator conjecture is a proposal for the mechanism of epistolution. As you may have learned elsewhere on this site, epistolution is the Lamarckian process by which organisms incumulate knowledge from their surroundings through use and disuse. I discovered this process in 2019 in the sense that Wallace and Darwin discovered evolution by natural selection in 1858. That is, they looked at evidence from the natural world and postulated that the facts required a theory of evolution by natural selection. In the same way, I looked at the facts around adaptation, heredity, intelligence and morality and concluded that the facts required a theory of epistolution. But discovering a phenomenon is a long way from understanding how this process actually works. In the case of Darwin and Wallace, it was a very long time before the details of the mechanisms of heredity, selection, and adaptation were worked out. In fact, all these details are still not worked out today. The details about the process that actually underpins evolution by natural selection were the work of many thousands of scientists subsequently working for many years to try to understand biology. Likewise, having discovered or postulated epistolution is by no means to have understood the detailed mechanism by which epistolution actually works. For this we need some sort of more practical proposal. This is the role of my oscillator conjecture.

  The oscillator conjecture says that an organism is a set of nested oscillating chemical reactions that repeat on a schedule, and these oscillators are the units that are distinguished between by use and disuse. Oscillators that are used are reinforced, and oscillators that are disused are mutated. This oscillator conjecture is a testable hypothesis, and my work with Hector on the stynker program was an attempt to do so. The test has not been funded or completed yet, but one day I hope it will be. If the oscillator conjecture turns out to be wrong, this does not negate the concept of epistolution or the validity of my discovery at all. It just would mean that I would be wrong about the mechanism.

  Darwin also had a proposal for the mechanism underpinning evolution by natural selection which was refuted. He believed that Lamarckian influences from the environment were passed along through the bloodstream in packets called “gemmules” which then lodged themselves in the germline cells. This concept was refuted by modern Mendelian genetics and the Modern Synthesis. Ironically, a version of this refuted theory of Darwin’s has actually very recently been discovered to be true. It turns out that there are packets called extracellular vesicles that are passed along through the blood to the germline and carry some heritable influence. But this is not yet a part of the standard story of evolutionary heredity.  

  Understanding epistolution and seeing its reach and its consequences does not require that we understand the mechanism by which it occurs. Of course it will be to our great practical advantage in medicine, ecology, and information technology if we are successful in understanding its mechanics. But the optimistic worldview and paradigm of epistolution that will one day prevail in biology and society at large will not require knowledge of all its technical details.  It may happen that the technical details are discovered soon, perhaps even by testing the oscillator conjecture, and that this provides definitive empirical proof that the epistolution process does in fact form the best explanation for life. But I suspect that even in that case, the philosophical shift that will be required to take epistolution seriously will still be a minority position. Most people, scientists included, prefer to continue seeing the world the way they already see it and are not eager to radically change perspectives, even given definitive refutation of their false ideas. There is no rational barrier today preventing us from taking epistolution seriously; it is already the best explanation for life. But I will be glad when the oscillator conjecture is tested, and even welcome the day when there are many competing theories about the mechanics of epistolution other than the oscillator conjecture. Today epistolution remains obscure. My discovery is virtually unknown outside of my friends and a few collaborators, and oscillators are the only existing proposal for its mechanism because I am the only one to have made a proposal of any kind.

But this situation cannot last forever.

Sincerely,

Charlie

Copyright Sunday, July 30, 2023