Upwelling
We are the well dwellers wallowing in our well bottoms.
Our most-familiar well manifests via the gravitational force keeping us physically on Earth – a gravity well that we can escape by rocketing up, up, and away. Escape velocity. There is a second well, largely unseen, that manifests via the life preceding us, defining us, and burdening us in the now as corporeal forms and functions – a life well that we might eventually escape by transcending terrestrial lineage. Life liberation.
While we have both dreamt and done rocketing beyond our gravity well we have barely conceptualized any small circle of light implying life beyond the burbling basin of attraction comprising what we are as humans and the life around us. A life well?! What lies beyond our life well’s lip? An empty vacuum of extinction? An Eden?
Stated differently, a life well is a conceptual model of the life forms existing and promulgating at a position in space and time. The more diverse the existing lineages the more potential the life well has to sustain life itself including the spontaneous evolution of new life forms. The Earth is the only established life well now known to humans. Hail, Darwin!
However, any life form that exists within Earth’s life well is also constrained by natural lineage – hark Hardy’s family face leaping from place to place. More technically, all life that now exists is defined by the forms and functions of prior generations as well as the processes and requirements of both physical reproduction and evolution across generations. Viewed with a hint of something else, King Charles’ evolutionary reign takes on a tyrannical tint. Mutation without representation!
The possibility of intentionally constructing life forms from scratch, base by base, increasingly without constraint to preexisting lineages, can be likened to climbing out of a life well. So-realized organisms could be described as having escaped their originating life well. This isn’t mere musing. We should expect that climbing beyond Earth’s life well is possible during this decade. For the simplest sorts of organisms to start. A microbe here and there. From yeast, to yeast 2.0, and, eventually, to something not yeast at all. But let’s start simpler still, with the viruses...
What do COVID-19, polio, and 1918 influenza have in common? All viruses perturbing the living patterns comprising Earth’s life well. Correct! But these pathogenic transformers of the human also share a second distinction. Their host, humans, have now made each virus from scratch. From computerized bits (i.e., information defining bases of DNA) freely available on the internet, to DNA printers, to reproducing infections in dishes within which cells, and only cells, previously sheltered safely in place.
Going from bits to atoms at the genome scale is the most powerful tool for rocketing beyond a life well. And the specific tool itself, DNA synthesis, directly and indirectly enables better DNA synthesis. When tools beget improved tools then the tooling gets exponentially better over time. Yes, the genomic rockets will explode and crash and leave craters over and again, mostly things not working at all, until “suddenly”… liberated life works.
The politics of course seem impossible. Haters already hate – GMOs! Hobbyist will be pitted against Hobbes-y-ist – garage bioterrorists! And, status quo will status quo – let’s industrialize biology! However, underneath the fashionable politics are more fundamental challenges and perhaps opportunities.
For example, democracies whose social contracts provide for individual security will face increasing challenges in reconciling cultural expectations with biological realities. The Black Death of the 14th century killed so many that we, the well dwellers of modernity, maintain a collective memory of their suffering; yet, ~700 years later, the abundance of homo sapiens in Europe is ten-fold greater. Stated differently, what is a strategy for public health security when a culture (i.e., society) can be attacked via a pathogen yet, at the same time, the long-term evolutionary prospects of the infected species remain unaffected?
As a second example, how can all have the option of accessing the means of production, as is needed to secure freedom from mutual oppression and undergird a culture of play, a culture of connectedness, and a culture of citizens taking care of things, when the very “threat” of developing such capacities is exploited rhetorically to keep things from changing?
Groups can be motivated by fear or by dream. Leadership grounded in fear requires that the feared thing come true before collective action occurs (e.g., climate change). Only leadership inspired by a dream can organize collective action a priori (e.g., Apollo, MLK Jr.).
What are our dreams of biology? They should at least include civilization-scale flourishing, ten billion people living in partnership with the rest of life on Earth, thanks to biotechnology enabling network-guided localized manufacturing on a planetary scale. Making such an outcome practically true seems likely to require a sort of understanding of life so complete that we can make life anew.
Upwelling within our life well should, wonderfully, renew our well itself.