Deep in the jungles of southern Mexico, is a hellish subterranean cave bathed in noxious fumes of hydrogen sulfide and walls coated with corrosive sulfuric acid. This extreme environment would be one of the last places one would expect to find life of any kind. Yet, despite this seemingly inhospitable atmosphere, Cueva de Villa Luz is home to a teeming variety of microbes that live in colonies in every nook and corner of the cave. [46] All over the planet, life has a habit of appearing in places with extreme conditions that one would expect to be barren and lifeless. Scientists have found microbes deep within the earth many kilometers underground, where both temperature and pressure are significantly greater than what we find on the surface of the planet. In the dark sunless depths of the ocean floor, near the scorching edges of volcano vents, researchers have found surprising exotic life forms of all shapes and sizes. [47] More familiar, but just as astonishing are the many inhabitants of the frigid artic and Antarctic.

These creatures prove that life is an act of defiance and resilience in the face of harsh conditions. Conditions that by all accounts should have obliterated this fledgling mechanism made of elegant molecules performing incredibly delicate life-sustaining functions. Paradoxically these same delicate life-sustaining functions are the reason that life is able to exist in such inhospitable climates. As we have seen in the last chapter, these functions are the algorithms of life forms. We must take a closer look at these algorithms, how they evolve and how they change over time to solve our mystery of human behaviors. For that we must begin with the earliest algorithms or the earliest life functions to come into being. These earliest algorithms would have been part of the earliest single celled bacteria like organisms to evolve on the planet. Studying modern bacteria and other single celled organisms can give us a glimpse at what those early algorithms may have been.

When we look at the various modern bacteria and other single celled organisms, we find that they have three basic types of algorithms that perform three types of functions, all of which more or less define our understanding of life itself. The first type of algorithm works to maintain the integrity of the life form against detrimental environmental conditions. These algorithms are designed to protect and work against patterns of changes in the environment that can erode or dismantle the life form. These are the algorithms that ensure the physical existence of the organism itself. Let us look at an example.

Sometimes the realities of an organism’s physical construct and the physical realities of its environment can create conditions unfavorable for the organism. A good example is what happens to a cell in water with high salt concentration. Most cells are bound by a semi-permeable membrane that separates the interior of the cell from its external environment. When you place a cell in water with high salt concentration, water will rush out of the cell and the cell will shrink due to a phenomenon known as osmosis. Osmosis occurs when two solutions with different salt concentrations are separated by a semi-permeable membrane. Water will move from the solution with the lower concentration of salts to the solution with the higher concentration of salts until the concentration levels in the two solutions equalize. For the cell in seawater, the salt concentration inside the cell cytoplasm, separated from the seawater by the semi-permeable cell membrane, is less than the salt concentration in the ocean. This difference in salt concentration exerts a constant pressure for the water inside the cell to flow out from the cell. A life form can therefore only evolve to live in the ocean, if it evolves a mechanism to counter the inevitable effects of osmosis. This is exactly what life forms did. They evolved algorithms to maintain an osmotic equilibrium, either by matching the salt concentration within to the external environment (osmoconformer) or by actively working against the direction of water flow (osmoregulator).

Every environment creates such unique unfavorable conditions for life. In freshwater for example the osmotic pressure is reversed. Water will rush into the cell because the salt concentration in the cytoplasm is higher than that of the water outside. So the cell must develop a different algorithm to work against reverse osmosis. Whatever the environmental conditions maybe, extremes of temperature, pressure or acidity, as long as life can evolve an algorithm that can counteract the effects of these conditions, life will thrive. The microbes, living in acidic caves or deep in the rocks, have all thrived because, they were able to develop targeted algorithms to work against detrimental environmental conditions.

But such life sustaining algorithms are not without cost. Whenever you have to stop or change the normal course of action in nature, you have to spend energy. This is true of a cell working against the natural flow of water from its interior out into the ocean. Counteracting osmosis requires the expenditure of energy. The second set of algorithms crucial for life, are those that give the organism the ability to extract the required energy from its environment for sustaining life activities. These algorithms too are developed opportunistically, often based on the resources that are abundant in the environment. The microorganisms, deep in the rocks subsist on gases like methane available in the interior of these rocks. Over the course of 3.5 billion years, life forms have evolved a whole array of algorithms to extract energy from their environment. Plants for example have the algorithm, we call photosynthesis, to collect energy from the sun. The microorganisms of Cueva de Villa Luz use the hydrogen sulfide gas as their source of energy. We human beings, like other life forms today, acquire the energy we need for our life-sustaining activities by digesting other life forms.

Even after an organism has successfully developed algorithms to counteract detrimental conditions and to extract energy from its surroundings, it still remains susceptible to changes in the environment. When the conditions of the environment changes, existing algorithms can be rendered useless or even harmful. In other words the information in the genetic memory is no longer survival enhancing. Organisms must either develop new algorithms for the new conditions or they will die out. For example if the salt concentration in an organism’s aquatic environment were to change, it could change the direction of osmotic flow and the organism would have to change its algorithm to survive. This of course is the process of natural selection, which brings us to the third type of algorithm pivotal for the existence of life. These are the algorithms that are responsible for the phenomenon we call reproduction. Reproduction is not just a mechanism that ensures future generations of life forms. Reproduction is also a mechanism responsible for algorithmic change. Reproduction represents the Generation stage of the creation process. It is during this process that information in the genetic memory is changed and new life sustaining algorithms are discovered. [48] Together, the algorithms for reproduction, sustaining life against environmental conditions and algorithms for energy extraction are basic to all life forms. With time, however, we see the gradual evolution of additional sets of algorithms.