Edge

by Kōji Suzuki

  Now, let’s consider how one’s perceived environment changes through the gift of sight. For an animal without it—an earthworm, for example—the world is not three-dimensional but rather a surface that is knowable through skin contact. Gaining sight is an incredible leap akin to adding a further dimension. It opens the door to a new world on an order fundamentally different from emerging from the sea or learning to fly.

  I conceive this miracle of a development as a mechanism in reciprocal relationship with light. Let me offer an analogy.

  I once watched a movie that my daughter rented called The Poseidon Adventure. When a luxury cruise liner is capsized by an enormous wave and slowly begins to sink in this adventure story, a clergyman leads a group of people up to the now inverted base of the vessel. A rescue helicopter lands on the base of the upturned ship and waits to see if there are any survivors. The ragtag bunch that makes it through the final hoop and gets to the hull starts banging against the steel plating to alert the rescue team. The presence of survivors confirmed, the team uses a burner to cut away a circular hole in the base of the ship, providing a route to safety.

  The evolution of the eye goes similarly. It wasn’t just about the brain, not simply a case of nerve endings extending from the cranium; the route to sight only opened with outside help. The acquisition of the eye was an immense feat accomplished at long last thanks to the cooperation of interior and exterior. What was outside guiding and aiding the nerve endings was the light of the sun.

  Light yields information. From that perspective, I cannot help but think that the reciprocal relationship with light was also responsible for the birth of our planet’s first life forms.

  Although the exact mechanisms for the development of life remain unknown, the theory that black smokers served as the wombs for primordial life is gaining traction. These form when seawater flows downwards through rifts in the earth’s crust, is heated by the magma below, and blows out as from a nozzle. The theory is that in these crevices of the world at the bottom of the sea, cells steeped in hot water began to organize themselves by chance. But did light reach there? If there was none, or only a tiny amount, then the black smoker was not fit to be the cradle of life.

  So what other possible explanations are there? Let me share a hypothesis of mine. It has been my belief that interaction with sunlight was an intrinsic factor in the emergence of life, but there are two apparent contradictions in this argument.

  Firstly, if it is true that life developed by chance, then one would expect to see both left- and right-spiraling DNA, but the strands all spiral towards the right. What force determined that they only spiral in one direction?

  Secondly, the various species that the Earth is teeming with today are thought to have evolved from life that emerged simultaneously at a single point 500 million years after the birth of the solar system. Why has such an emergence been limited to a single point in the system’s history?

  Contemplating what phenomenon, limited in time, could endow a right spiral, I thought of the disappearance of a black hole. Light and particles are released in that event. If a black hole vanished in the vicinity of our solar system 500 million years into the latter’s history, and life on earth was born in relation to the emanating light, then the point of emergence would be limited. Furthermore, since a black hole spins, it could transfer directionality to its surroundings.

  The momentary brilliance of a dying black hole drove the birth of life. The power of zero. This resembles the becoming of matter via distortions in the vacuum.

  The birth of life is synonymous with the birth of information. Three of the four chemical bases ATGC combine to form an amino acid, and a chain of 200 amino acids is required to form a protein that is relevant for life. That amounts to information, in the language of ATGC. Life equals information. What conveyed the information? Light, of course.

  In Genesis in the Old Testament, the first words spoken by God are: “Let there be light.” God created light, and interacting with it life was born.

  At this point I’d like to touch on the extinction of the dinosaurs. It might seem that I’m digressing, but that is not the case.

  The sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is a major event in the history of evolution, and there are many theories as to the cause. The one currently favored: their fate was affected by the impact of a giant meteorite that altered the climate. There is apparently a large crater in the Yucatan Peninsula that dates back to this.

  But we must not fall into this trap. In trying to accurately describe nature through language, there are two kinds of approaches. One is simple and beautiful and clicks immediately when presented. The other subconsciously sponges on the trends of an era, comes off the top of the head, and is mediocre and hackneyed. The Copernican heliocentric hypothesis and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity are examples of the former approach, while attributing the extinction of dinosaurs to a meteorite collision is without a doubt an instance of the latter.

  The meteorite theory was first raised in the 1970s. What trends obtained then? The world was in the middle of the Cold War, when the idea of an end immediately brought to everyone’s mind images of devastation in the wake of a nuclear exchange. Powerful bombs raining down and putting an end to everything. How very simple.

  Its subconscious application is the meteorite hypothesis. A meteorite may very well have fallen, but that this drove the dinosaurs into mass extinction is forced. No matter how drastic the change in climate, some specimens are bound to survive. I believe that the extinction of the dinosaurs was biological, the result of the flipping of a switch across their species. They left the stage due to some internal factor to allow mammals to prosper. A pan-species interaction with light flicked an extinction switch that had budded within the dinosaurs.

  Much later in time, just around 50,000 years ago, something similar occurred. The baton passed from the hand of the Neanderthals to that of Cro-Magnon man, or Homo sapiens. At that point, both species had spread out of Africa and could be found on the European continent. Then, after a watershed around 50,000 years ago, the Neanderthals began to drift into extinction while Homo sapiens began to flourish; the two species could not interbreed even if they mated. The Neanderthals are said to have possessed larger brains than Homo sapiens. Despite living in the same environment, why did one perish and the other prosper?

  The answer is language. The Neanderthals had not developed a language sophisticated enough to describe the physical world, while Homo sapiens had. Language was key in this changing of guards.

  Having held forth on the emergence of primordial organisms, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the transition from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens, there is one more hypothesis that I would like to offer.

  Whether we are talking about the birth of primordial life, the organ called the eye, or language, given that they all create new information, the same mechanism may have been in play in each instance. It makes sense for us, then, to seek the answer to the mystery of how life evolved on this planet by examining the most recent analogous event—the acquisition of language. Simply put, it is easier for us to examine what occurred 50,000 years ago than 3.9 billion years ago. We are unlikely to ever find the truth by stirring some primordial organic soup in a lab.

  If the same mechanism was responsible for the extinction of both the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals, then the question is why they had to die out.

  What the birth of the eye prepared was brain development. With the eye, it is as though brain matter forged a path through the skull. Visual perception of external stimuli precipitated further evolution, eventually leading to a brain complex enough to handle language.

  What the extinction of the dinosaurs prepared was mammals’ prosperity, which is tantamount to brain development. Dinosaurs are reptilian creatures, born from eggs. Mammals, on the other hand, spend a period of time before birth developing within wombs. This difference is crucial as gestating in ample amniotic fluid promotes brain development. Birthing
via eggs places a limit on the evolution of reptiles’ brains.

  The key in the transition from Neanderthal to Homo sapiens was acquiring language.

  We’re seeing that evolution was led toward the development of a brain capable of using language. When a undesirable swerve from that path threatened, a form of orbital correction took place. The guiding force pulling strings from behind the stage is light.

  But why has the universe/god arranged this course leading to the development of a language-capable brain? There is only one answer: the universe/god hoped to be described via language, including the one called mathematics. Absent that, the universe could not extend, evolve, grow.

  From a young age I have always been perplexed by why it is possible for us to describe our universe with numbers. When a natural phenomenon is described beautifully and wins the consensus of the totality of DNA, on occasion the universe provides what is perhaps a reward in the form of evidence.

  Through pure internal brainwork, Einstein interpreted distortions in time and space caused by matter and energy as gravitational fields in his Theory of General Relativity. Four years after it was established, the universe fixed a seal of approval by showing how the sun bent light during a solar eclipse over West Africa. Seven years after Friedman used reasoning alone to conclude that the universe was not still, James Webb learned through spectral analysis that the further you look into space, the faster it is receding. The discovery of background microwave radiation thirty-three years later also provided an imprimatur to Friedman’s theory. Not long after Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter through calculations, the universe produced positrons for him. When described in the language of mathematics, the universe alters its physical constants and gives rise to new phenomena and matter. Thanks to its reciprocal relationship with language, the universe evolves and grows as well. I could almost believe that it was not until Copernicus’ famous revelation that the earth actually began to revolve around the sun.

  The universe needs its mathematical description and gave DNA the potential for language.

  We look up to the countless stars in the night sky and dream of life forms unlike ourselves on some other planet. Alas, the only life that exists in our universe is DNA. If intelligent life other than humankind exists, they do in a universe other than ours and beyond our perception. In their own ways, in concert with their own universe, they partake in a different world.

  After the Big Bang, our universe began its inexorable outward expansion. If it has an edge, it recedes from us with every second that passes. This growing distant sometimes seems to me like a flight from the cognitive ability of DNA, a game of tag tempting us to give chase.

  The importance of the relationship between subject and object is no different in human society. Mutual support and cooperative growth bring about progress, and that’s why the structure’s collapse is a fiasco. If our description of the universe is erroneous and the contradiction begins to spread, our counterpart may not know how to respond, and panic. It may even drop its eternal game of tag, giving up on us.

  It’s just as it is with people. If a rift between husband and wife deepens and each side only makes contradictory demands of the other, the relationship fails and ends in divorce. It becomes necessary to dissolve the relationship, in other words to reset.

  Say that a man loses his sight from accident or illness and has to go about as a blind person. If he accepts the loss and adjusts his relationship with his environment accordingly, daily life could proceed with few inconveniences. If he chooses to ignore his loss, however, and tries to continue as he always has, then immediately inconveniences would arise. Bumping into the corners of tables, falling off stairs due to missteps, and run over by vehicles, his life would come to a standstill.

  Even when the conditions of existence change, there will be no problem if subject and object are ably reconciled. If not, the relationship collapses and life is plunged into a crisis.

  The relationship between DNA and cosmos is no different.

  The universe is not structured as an existence of steadfast things. It is a network of flowing phenomena that come in and out of being and is neither perfect nor unchanging. For that matter, there is no guarantee anywhere that physics and mathematics are correct; they’ve merely withstood scrutiny until now. All is hypothesis. And that is why we must not spare the effort to describe nature accurately and beautifully through language, if the relationship is to be maintained.

  Is the writing on the Gateway of the Sun such a description?

  As I think this, purely by chance my bag, sitting on the table next to the word processor, opens its mouth, and a few Polaroids slide out. By force of gravity, they glide down the surface of my sketchbook which rests at an angle. I pick up the sketchbook just as they’re about to fall, put the photos aside, and turn to the page with my sketches of the gate. When I place on the page a few of the Polaroids and compare them to the sketches, my line of sight increasingly favors the photos.

  Depicted at the gate’s center is a figure that appears to be a sun god, arms raised and sending rays of light from its angular face. It must be a version of Viracocha. To either side are three tiered sets of squares containing images of beasts. They all look similar, like a bird flying with its wings spread. Below these a fourth tier features geometric patterns mainly consisting of straight lines.

  Although the images look alike, there are slight differences in detail. The direction of the bird’s face depends on which side of Viracocha it is, and the wings are extended to varying degrees.

  Apart from these is another relief of a bird that seems to be hanging behind for some chance. The more I look at this point, the more it seems to destroy the composition of the whole. More hulking than the other birds, it’s only slightly smaller than Viracocha himself.

  The wings look like two boomerangs set in an X shape. It has a head and arms and legs, the limbs more human than anything, the impression that it’s a bird owing solely to the odd wings it carries on its back. Horn-like shapes protrude from the top of its slick reptilian face.

  The association that comes to mind is The Plumed Serpent. In South American lore, however, the winged snake is virtually an alias of Viracocha and imbued with positive connotations. The relief I am looking at now gives quite a different impression. The right hand is swung up to chin height; the left dangles next to the groin, palm facing outwards. From the knees downwards, the legs swell out into bulbs out of proportion with the rest of the body. It looks to be stepping forth with a finned left foot.

  Depicted with far more dynamism and realism than the other images, off color and not about to harmonize with its surroundings, it looks almost alive.

  I realize only when it is pointed out to me that this plumed serpent probably isn’t an abstract creation but rather incorporates a faithful rendering of some actual person’s face and features. No wonder it’s so raw and at the same time repulsive.

  The document ended there.

  For a moment Saeko just sat, unable to think clearly, barely registering the fact that she had finished.

  Images of the Tiwanaku relics cluttered her mind. She tried to focus, to think about why her father might have been writing this. She wondered if it was a journal intended to record the daily events of his trips through these ancient relics. Or was it more an attempt to interpret the mysteries shrouding these ancient civilizations, particularly why they sometimes appeared to possess technology and knowledge beyond their time? He had also written about the sudden decline of such cultures, how many had just disappeared overnight; perhaps the text was an attempt to map out his initial thoughts on group disappearances.

  The text read as though it were a rough draft, as though her father had been jotting down his experiences in journal form while brainstorming through thoughts that came to him at the time. Saeko decided that, most likely, he was planning to use this as a base to work from, henceforth focusing on a single theme and rewriting his notes accordingly. Saeko knew her father’s wo
rk patterns of old. Towards the end he’d begun to discuss his own interpretations of the emergence of life and evolution. Saeko realized that the postcard she had received from him had contained a summary of the keywords, the key concepts, of this part.

  Her father theorized that the collapse of a black hole 4 billion years ago had been the defining factor in the beginning of cellular life on earth. Life had then evolved based on a relationship with light that eventually resulted in the development of a brain capable of describing its environment through language, including that of numbers. He identified a causal link between the developments of sight and language and touched on the causes of mass extinction, first with regard to the dinosaurs, and then the Neanderthals. His arguments deliberately strayed from conventional ideas that evolution was a blind process, that it was governed by chance, and went out of the way to claim that the process was purposive. Saeko recalled his detailing of the extraordinary idea that the universe (or god) had granted the power of language to life to satisfy its desire to be put down in the language of numbers. The interrelationship between life and matter deepened via the medium of light and information and enabled further evolution of the universe.

  Saeko recalled a conversation she’d had with Toshiya about the relationship between black holes and informational theory. He had given her a copy of a recently published paper that held that the power of entropy weakens near the event horizon of a vanishing black hole. The weakening of entropy, by extension, could give rise to the formation of structure, and this could suffice to furnish the unique conditions necessary for the emergence of life.

  Saeko wanted to believe her father’s arguments, but the subtext of his writing scared her. Throughout, he seemed to be warning that the collapse of the relationship he outlined could bring about a heretofore unheard-of catastrophe. Her father had conceived the universe as a network of phenomena where everything was caught in a continual flux of becoming and perishing. Anything that pushed too hard against the flow of progress would be naturally de-selected. Saeko couldn’t help but agree with his depiction of the world as unstable, uncertain—fleeting and full of hypotheses—but the rest? The one thing she would never doubt, of course, was her father’s love. Saeko found herself able to clearly imagine her father writing this, all of eighteen years ago. She could almost hear the soft whisper of his voice.