The Organization of Matter and Life 339 



cal order predicated by the properties of the compounds orig- 

 inally present in reactive mixtures in or on the earth. Some sort 

 of natural selection occurred, favoring the compounds which were 

 larger and mutually attractive and which formed stable mixtures. 

 Many of these compounds had inherent physical properties which, 

 under certain ecological conditions, resulted in orderly aggrega- 

 tions of large numbers of molecules. There seems little doubt that 

 this ordering property of certain molecules was a necessary at- 

 tribute for the evolution of life. 



At some point in this chemical evolution, mixtures of compounds 

 occurred which had three properties: (1) absorbing selected com- 

 pounds from the environment, (2) using these to duplicate one 

 or more master compounds, and (3) in the final reaction of this 

 process producing a by-product which acted as a catalyst or en- 

 zyme starting the whole process again. This series of reactions 

 would have been a conditioned ordering— certainly an ordering, 

 but one which would occur only in a suitable environment having 

 a renewable supply of nutrient materials. 



As with the evolution of the stars, so there may have been many 

 cycles of organic ordering in the world before life evolved. In 

 this event each cycle undoubtedly produced chemical "building 

 blocks" such that the next cycle of this organic ordering process 

 followed different specific pathways and produced different spe- 

 cific products. 



ORDERING IN LIFE 



When life did evolve, it was an orderly and highly precise system 

 of integrated molecular machines, organized as individual units 

 or cells which absorbed nutrients from their environment, increased 

 in size, then inexorably divided into daughter cells exactly like 

 their parents. These daughters followed just as inexorably the same 

 cycle of growth and reproduction. At this stage it would seem 

 that life might be organizing all the organic material in the world 

 into myriads of individuals of exactly the same kind. 



The replication at reproduction was not, however, always per- 

 fectly exact. Mutations unquestionably have always occurred at 

 random intervals in any reproducing line. Mutations produce new 

 kinds of individuals, hence the effect of mutation is to increase 

 continuously the randomness of the population. 



This kind of randomizing brought natural selection into play as 

 an ordering influence on living organisms. Because living organisms 



