The Fly Problem

As early as 150 years ago Charles Darwin, along with his 19th century contemporaries, believed that the basic content of a cell was simple “protoplasm” that had the ability to self-replicate. Not only has advancement in science shown that this understanding was wrong, but every day the magnitude of just how wrong such an understanding has grows exponentially.

The cell is one of the most complicated mechanisms we have ever observed. It has centers for energy production and distribution, waste disposal, recycling, import and exporting of materials, communication systems, databases, molecular machines for transport, along with rules and guidelines for operation that make a nuclear power plant seem like child’s play in comparison. This makes a cell more akin to a city shrunk down to a micro scale rather than a simple self-replicating protoplasm.

So how did the people in the past get it so wrong? It is based on a single flawed assumption; that they thought as their understanding of the science would grow that they would find that the systems would become more simplified. The reality is that the opposite is true. The more we learn about life and science the more complex we find things in reality to be.

For instance, years ago the famous Drake Equation attempted to calculate the likeliness of other intelligent life existing in the universe. Based on the knowledge that was available as early as 1961, the equations theorized that not only that intelligent life in the universe must be incredibly common, but that even our own Milky Way Galaxy should be spawning with intelligent life. This optimism caused billions to be spent over decades on the program SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). Interesting enough, after years of observing the cosmos and finding nothing the argument for the Fermi Paradox was stipulated as a criticism to the Drake Equation, which asked if intelligent life is so ubiquitous why have we heard nothing but silence.