The Wonder of Water

Water's profound fitness for life on Earth and mankind.

Michael Denton

He starts with Acknowledgements and cites Lawrence Henderson's "The Fitness of the Environment" from 1913. He also cites Wald, with whom I am not so familiar, but Wald writes an Introduction to the 1958 republication of Henderson's book.

Before the Bridal Veil

A reverie about the Bridal Veil falls of Yosemite in which he reflects on the profound beauty of the waterfall environment but also points to water's essential function of leaching minerals from rock. He then moves to water's ideal role in human circulation.

p12 Makes a list of some of the great functions of water.

p13 Refers to "biocentric unity". In discussing the functions of water he comments "They reveal that life on Earth - including mankind - is not mere cosmic happenstance.Through its magic, water sings a universal song of life, and in its special fitness for human physiology it sings a special song of man. The properties of water show that beings with our biology do indeed occupy a special central place in the order of nature, and that the blueprint for life was present in the properties of matter from the moment of creation. We may have been displaced from the spatial center of the universe but not its 'teleological center'. In the properties of water the so-called Copernican Principle is well and duly overturned. "

1. The Water Wheel

p15 Starts with Bentley's reverent quote from his 1693 book.

p16 Water the only natural substance on Earth that can exist in all three states.

p16 Phillip Ball quote "Almost all of the non-aqueous fabric of our planet remains in the same physical state. The oxygen and nitrogen of the air do not condense; the rock, sands, and soils do not melt .. or evaporate."

p17 Compares the freezing and boiling points of water with those of other low molecular weight compounds.

p18 The Great Wheel - The Water Cycle. Phillip Ball quote: "The very existence of a hydrological cycle is a consequence of water's unique ability to exist in more than one physical state - solid, liquid, or gas - under the conditions that prevail on the surface of the planet."

p19 Phillip Ball quote: "Each 3100 years, a volume of water equivalent to all the oceans pass through the atmosphere, carried there by evaporation and moved by precipitation .. the Sun's heat removes from the oceans the equivalent of three feet in depth each year - 875 cubic kilometers in total every day."

p19 "The wheel has kept on turning for billions of years only because liquid water and global temperatures have been conserved by regulatory mechanisms - many of which also depend on unique properties of water .."

p19 Includes a discussion of the viscosity of ice, which I hadn't seen before.

p19 "In effect, the hydrological cycle is enabled not by one unique property of water, but by several properties that 'conspire together', as it were, to turn the 'wheel' and provide water for land-based life."

p20 "Although the importance of the hydrological cycle is widely acknowledged, what is, as far as I am aware, never mentioned is the remarkable fact that the delivery of water to the land, an essential medium for all life on Earth, is in effect carried out by and dependent on the properties of water itself, unaided by any other external regulatory systems.

In this extraordinary fact we glimpse the first example of what may only be described as the transcending fitness of water for life as it exists on Earth."

p20 Erosion and Weathering. Details of its function and necessity and water as the ideal agent.

p21 Cites Henderson and Franks on the vast quantity of the eroded minerals - so vast in fact that it would level all mountains in a small fraction of geologic time. Highlights the role of CO₂

p22 Highlights surface tension, expansion upon freezing, and viscosity.

p23 Discusses Niagara Falls as example, 7 miles of erosion in 12000 years. Discusses the role of glaciers in shaping the surface.

p23 Glaciers: the viscosity of ice is 10 orders of magnitude less than rock, so it can change form and migrate more easily. Then there is always some liquid at the interface with the rock under it so that some "basal sliding" occurs.

p24 ".. Water is uniquely fit for its role in eroding and weathering rocks thanks to a remarkable suite of diverse properties, many of them unique and anomalous, which act together to the grand and vital end of carrying essential nutrients to terrestrial life. And this synergy is possible in turn only because of the prior fitness of water to enable the hydrological cycle."

p24-25 soil properties - forming an "ideal matrix for retaining water and its cargo of dissolved mineral nutrients"

p25 diagram of erosion and weathering

p25 Capillary water contrasted with gravitational water. Helps survive dry spells.

p26 Brady and Weil summary of soil's role

p26-27 Clay summary. Surface area of clay particles 1000x that of coarse sand. Ion exchange in clay critical to plant life, comparable to photosynthesis in its importance - without clay, maybe no large life.

p27 "There is a beautiful and elegant teleology in all this. The same process which draws from rocks the minerals and essential elements for life generates at the same time - in the clays and sands and silts that together form soil with organic debris - an ideal water- and mineral- retaining matrix that provides the means by which the mineral-enriched water can be used by plants. (And also ultimately by animals, because in a sense plants are nature's intermediaries, a means of imbibing and concentrating the minerals eroded from the rocks and transmitting them to the terrestrial herbivores that feed on them, and to the carnivores that feed on the herbivores.)"

p27 Chart 1.2 of the above

p28 Key role of the dominant silicate minerals in producing clay - he takes it as teleology.

p28-29 Surface tension, chart 1.3

p29 Viscosity and circulation Chart 1.4, superb solvent and in constant flux. Cites Ball

p30 Providence conception back >2000 years. Quotes James Dooge.

p31 Dalton's reverie about nature. Tuan and natural theology.

p31 A teleological tapestry - another summary of the roles of the different properties of water.

p32 Five properties of water that work together in breaking down rocks and weathering minerals:

Water's ability to exist in three states in the ambient temperature range
Water's high surface tension
Water's expansion upon freezing
Water's viscosity
Water's capacity to dissolve an unusually wide variety of substances.

p33 "Water's properties are fit as delivery man, quarry master, and storekeeper for land-based life, all in one! This is not everyday design, analogous to that seen in human technology; this is design of a transcending elegance and parsimony."

p33 "This chapter has highlighted the fact that it is not so much the sheer number of properties of water fit for life that conveys such and irrepressible sense of design, but the way they work together to achieve ends vital to life on Earth. Yes, the number is impressive; but that fact pales against the deep teleology manifested in their profoundly purposeful synergy. That the pattern of the interactions conforms to a teleological hierarchy is as remarkable a fact as any in the entire realm of science."

p34 Chart 1.5 on teleology.

2. Tectonic Recycling

p35 Weinberg et al and Rogers et al quotes. Quotes cover the profound effect of a little water on mineral properties adn behavior, including the behavior of melting.

p35 Erosion rates, 2 to 10mm/yr.

p36 For life's history, there had to be a continual input of new rock. There is also a necessary replenishment of minerals needed for life in the sea.

p36 4 billion years of life - nature since the Cambrian Explosion at 540 million years implies chemical constancy over that time period, and salt deposits suggest constancy back to 3.5 Gyr. About 20 minerals are vital.

p37 But life couldn't have persisted for this period without replenishment of the mineral content. 3500 myr vs a few myr to completely erode the crust. So this is a pointer to plate tectonics and is a new idea to me. Further evidence of replenishment over this vast period of time comes from limestone layers thousands of meters thick on the ocean floor.

p37-38 CaCO₃ thousands of meters thick, and it comes from life! From Elements of Physical Oceanography comes the assertion that in about 3 myr this would deplete the carbon and sterilize the oceans if it were not continuously replaced.

p39 Only with the understanding of plate tectonics did steps toward a mechanism for this massive replacement become evident. 1955-65 were key years in this understanding.

p40 From Marcia Bjornerud "Earth's surface and subsurface - like our own skin and organs - are in a constant state of renovation, the overall architecture preserved even as the constituent parts are incrementally replaced. Nothing is permanent, and yet because of this everything is eternal."

p40 "So plate tectonics explains why the continents exist and persist, why mountains are never finally ground to sea level, why the hydrological cycle can replenish the essential mineral content of the terrestrial hydrosphere endlessly over billions of years, ensuring the continuance of life on land, and why the seas have never been depleted of their dissolved salt and mineral content. Plate tectonics has revealed that as fast as the hydrological cycle is wearing down the rocks , and as fast as the ocean sediments are entombing life's essential elements on the sea bed, tectonic processes have been continually replacing them."

p40-41 "water plays a crucial role in lubricating the entire tectonic system." Bjornerud: "Only Earth developed habits of self-maintenance that have kept it looking youthful and fresh." "Earth's beauty secret: water, and lots of it"

p41 The tectonic plates:

Upper layer lithosphere, several plates
Next layer hot upper mantle, asthenosphere
Two types:
1. Continental 250km thich
2. Oceanic plates 100-150km when mature.

p42 Fig 2.4 plate boundaries

p42 Upper layer of plate called the "crust'

Oceanic crust 6-7km thick
Continental crust 35-45 km
Movement: few mm to 15cm/yr.

The hot magma moves up at plate boundaries of divergent or constructive plate boundaries, e.g., Atlantic and Pacific mid-ocean ridges.

p43 At a convergent boundary or subduction zone, the material cycles back over a period of millions of years. The emergent material is less dense and rises, but as it moves it accretes more dense material from below. It becomes more dense and finally subducts.

p44 Alfred Wegener first proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912, but the geological establishment rejected it for decades - evidence became overwhelming in the 50's - 60's, a dramatic scientific revolution. (Has the flavor of the story of Bretz and the Washington scabland story discussed in Montgomery's book The Rocks Don't Lie).

p45-46 The critical nature of viscosity for plate tectonics. Dry olivine is 100x stronger than wet olivine. 50ppm of water is enough to significantly reduce its strength. Olivine makes up 50-60% of the upper mantle. 100-1000fold reduction in viscosity with water content.

p47 Water content lowers the melting temperature and contributes to the melting of magma. The water effect on the viscosity and melting temperatures is crucial to plate tectonics.

p47-48 Rising basalt is hydrated - up to 5%.

p48 The entire ocean volume is recycled in 80myr.

p49 "So just as water delivers itself by its own properties to the thirsty land via the hydrological system, water by its own powers delivers itself to the mantle, and thereby activates the whole tectonic system, and sustains it over long ages."

p50 The mineral composition of sea water differs from surface erosion water. For sea water the Mg is decreased and the Mn and Fe increase. This is attributable to the hydrothermal system. The mid-ocean ridge ionic exchange helps maintain the constancy of oceanic chemical composition for long-term life.

p50-51 Discusses salt balance, Chart 2.1. Recycling the Oceanic Crust.

p53 "No water, not granites - no oceans, no continents."

p53 Mt Everest 8800mm Olympus Mons on Mars 22000 m.

p55 Paradox resolved: Mineral constancy has been maintained over immense periods in the face of continual erosion of continental crust and deposition of minerals from life on the ocean floors. The resolution of the paradox lies in the tectonic recyling of the oceanic and continental crusts.

p56 Quote from Ball "For all its fluidity, water is also one of the main shaping agents of nature. it makes rugged corrugations in highlands, carving out the intaglio of river valleys. It eats away at coastlines to generate underhangs and caves and eventually to collapse them, and to shift entire beaches own the coast. On its course from mountain to sea it may leave exquisite rock sculptures in its path. Cycles of freezing an thawing spit apart the firmist of rocks, reducing slopes to rubble...And in tongues of ice, water scours the Earth into broad valleys and shifts huge boulders over great distances."

p57 Summary with more quotes from Bjornerud. Need diagram in HyperPhysics. "From the evidence reviewed in this chapter, water's role is indeed, as Bjornerud comments 'profound' and 'surprising'. As she comments 'All parts of the fabrication and recycling process are cleverly linked and powered largely by water'. 'The destruction of continental crust via subduction leads to the formation of continental crust through water-facilitated melting. The destruction of continental crust via water-driven erosion ultimately replenishes the mantle for the next round of .. crust production.' She concludes with language whose teleological implications are hard to ignore: 'Efficient, sustainable, robust and elegant, the system would win top honors in an industrial design competition.'" p131of Bjornerud's Reading the Rocks.

p58 Continues the reverie on water's teleological role. "The design of such systems, in which the parts are reciprocally self-formative, transcends the design of any artifact or machine ever created."

p59 Kant on "formative reciprocity".

p59-60 Kant comments very interesting. "Kant in his "Critique of Judgement" argues that a defining characteristic of living system (what he calls a 'natural purpose') is the formative reciprocity of their parts. He points out that systems, more specifically living organisms, whose parts exhibit such a reciprocal formative influence on each other belong to a completely different order of being than that of contingent artifactual assemblages.' .. 'An organized [natural] being is then not a mere machine' for it 'possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind.' 'This can never be the case with artificial instruments.' Natural purposes exhibit 'nothing analogous to any causality we know.' He defines a natural whole or system as an 'organized product of nature..in which every part is reciprocally purpose (end) and means'"

p60 "The notion that the tectonic system is the result of design rises unbidden from the evidence. How could such an elegant system of integrated elements of unique fitness, which has fashioned the world for life over billions of years, and which transcends in its reciprocal self-formative abilities any artifact created to date, have arisen out of blind collisions of atoms? And how could the manifold fitness of water, which conveys every impression of having been fine-tuned to turn the wheels, be mere happenstance?"

3. Preserving the Ocean

p61 Stromatolites of Shark Bay in Western Australia

p62 photo of stromatolites. Oldest ~3.4Gyr cf 3.7-3.8Gyr for the Greenland specimens. The chemical composition of the oceans must have contained all the necessary elements continually over this vast time period.

p63 James Lovelock of NASA: "the continuous existence of the ocean since the formation of the Earth is also documented by the great beds of marine sediment found throughout the geological record."

p63 "there must be an ocean" as prior to life and almost everything on earth. Paragraph of applications of the phrase.

p63 "What factors have preserved the world's ocean and the Earth's temperature"? Marcia Bjornerud in "Reading the Rocks" "We don't entirely know. But if this equilibrium had not prevailed, we would never have emerged to wonder about such things. Sentient life could only have emerged on a planet that has provided consistently and benevolently for its denizens."

p63 Comment on Lovelock's "Gaia"

p64 Role of water's "stickiness" in star and planetesimal formation

p65 Phillip Ball quote "Star formation: it's what every world needs" and comment on water's role in collapse of nebulae.

p66 Discussion of how Earth got oceans - olivine role. The olivine which was part of the forming of Earth may have had a molecule of water for each 8 atoms of silicon. Other models presume the water came from comets.

p67 Volcanoes emission of gases: 95% water vapor, ~1% CO₂

p67 Comet model of water origin.

p68 Asteroid variation of water origin.

p68 Earth's stable temperature

p69-70 Negative feedback system of silicate weathering affects CO₂ in atmosphere.

p70 Olivine chemical reaction

p71 Continuation of above plus "snowball Earth" scenario.

p72 Paleocene-Eocene temperature maximum. Avoiding the runaway greenhouse effect like Venus. Cites silicate weathering as key to Earth's avoidance of Venus' fate.

p73 Cites life as one element of assistance to CO₂ balance.

p73 Graphic of water and the silicate homeostat.

p74 Graphic of water's role in ocean preservation. Also a survey: if water...

p76-78 The importance of water freezing from the top down and its expansion upon freezing. Maximum density at 4C, its large latent heat of freezing, its low conductivity and the low conductivity of ice, the viscosity of ice, properties of sea water freezing - all important to life.

p79 The nature of salt water and brine ice. Thermohaline circulation.

p80 Discussion of the fact that neither fresh water or salt water freezes from the bottom up. "An ensemble of unique elements of fitness, all working together to the same end."

p81 High temperature of boiling and freezing.

p81-82 The tropopause, a layer of the atmosphere at -50° to -60°C which is cold enough to freeze out water from the atmosphere before it gets high enough to be split by UV radiation. Maybe Venus lost all its water that way.

p82 Water is a greenhouse gas. He says it raises the Earth's temperature by 33°C. States that it is 2/3 of the greenhouse effect.

p83-84 There is an enormous spike in the heat capacity of water at the critical point. This is relevant to water in contact with upwelling magma. Graphic p84. This has implications for heat transport away from newly forming oceanic crust and allows water to penetrate more deeply into the newly forming crust.

p85 The chemical stability of water in the presence of CO₂, N₂ and O₂.

p86 Chart 3.3 and summary of water's special properties.

4. The Climate Machine

p90 Discussion of latent heat of vaporization and it's effect on the climate

p91 Cooling by evaporation protects aerobic life - overheating reduces O₂ solubility in water.

p92 Latent heat of freezing

p93 cites Whewell's Bridgwater Treatise

p94 Global climate machine - large scale convection currents, without which tropics would be 14C hotter and the poles 25C colder.

p95 Poleward heat transfer 66% atmospheric, 33% ocean currents

p95 Hadley and Ferrel cells and other circulation patterns in atmosphere

p96 Atmospheric transfer mechanisms, diagram, cites Henderson

p96 graphic of atmospheric circulation of air

p98 Coriolis force discussion and NE tradewinds

p99 Ocean conveyer belt diagram p100

p101 Deep ocean currents Fig 4.6

p102 More on downwelling of cold sea water, -1.8C sea water, pulls Gulf Stream northward.

p104 Chart 4.1

5. Water, Trees and Light

p106 Surface tension and capillary action, cites Henderson

p107-108 Capillary action and trees. Details about heights, etc.

p109 Discussion of the role of tensile strength of water

p110 First two paragraphs attribute all of lift to tensile strength - the role of osmotic pressure not mentioned, attributes all to capillary action? Need to check that out. One thing he discusses which I didn't include in my discussion of capillary action is that there is an interconnected network of capillaries which can accomplish a volume lift that single capillaries couldn't manage.

p110 Vogel in "The Life of a Leaf". No close analogy in human technology. Holbrook and Zwieniecki

p111 Photosynthesis - description and formula, mentions quantum tunneling

p113 70% of Sun's output in range useful for photosynthesis.

p113 Transparency of water in the visible, but absorption of nearly all other wavelengths.

p114 Diagram of water absorption Fig 5.4. Need to include similar in HyperPhysics

p114 "Considering the importance of visible sunlight for all aspects of terrestrial life, one cannot help being awed by the dramatically narrow window in the atmospheric absorption ... and in the absorption spectrum of water." Encyclopedia Britannica. Might quote this in HyperPhysics although I have these details. One can easily reply that life evolved to make use of those particular wavelengths, but there are at least three independent variables here - the spectrum of the Sun is independent of the absorption spectrum of water, and both are independent of the range of quantum energies appropriate to the chemistry of life. So when three independent variables line up in a way essential to the existence of life, you have got to sense the "ghost of teleology looking over your shoulder" as someone put it.

p115 Very few solids are transparent, but the transparency of ice allows photosynthesis to occur under ice.

p116 Chart on the fitness of snow and ice as a potentiater for life.

p116 Cites Loudon's 1824 Encyclopedia of Gardening. Snow and ice act as insulators which keeps roots and bulbs from the extreme cold of northern winters and provides the first moisture of spring. Freezing and thawing also tends to pulverize the soil and make it more fit for plant use.

p119 Stability of H₂O in the presence of O₂ is remarkable and necessary for life like ours.

p120 Chart of sequence of water properties

p122 The last paragraph is a brief summary,and the whole page is a summary of water's fitness for life. "...water, by its own powers, delivers itself to the land, erodes the rocks, provides the minerals for terrestrial ecosystems, rests in the soil, and transits as needed through the soil to the roots. Now we see that it is also by water's own powers that it raises itself and its precious cargo of minerals from the root to the leaf, enabling the production of life-giving oxygen through photosynthesis. In all such instances, a prior element of fitness is exploited to use another element in the ensemble of fitness. It is even more marvelous when...a succession of ends (each utilizing a unique element of fitness of water) are achieved by using a prior unique element or elements of fitness, making up what amounts to a teleological sequence or rational hierarchy of means to ends."ie

6. Water and Human Physiology

p123-125 Story of running down an antelope. Because of naked skin and the evaporation of perspiration as a potent cooling agent, the natives of arid countries can run an antelope to heat exhaustion because it can only pant to exhaust heat.

p125 Cites Henderson on the heat of vaporization of water, also Schmidt-Nielson. Higher than any known molecular fluid.

p126 Another quote of Henderson on conduction, convection and radiation

p127 Begins discussion of the specific heat of water

p128 Cites Henderson on specific heat

p131 Water is highest in thermal conductivity of common fluids. Need to add that to my list of unique properties in HyperPhysics.

p133 Chart of fitness of water for temperature regulation.

p134 "parsimony and elegance of the teleology even more striking."

p134 This discussion of oxygen transport is new to me. The basic idea is that oxygen diffusion is adequate for transport of oxygen over very short distances in biological fluids, but quickly becomes impractically slow with increasing distance. Thus it is adequate for oxygen transport for single cell life, but for multicellular life, a circulatory system becomes necessary. Interesting data from physiologist Knut Schmidt-Nielson:

One micron: 10^-4 seconds
10 microns (one cell diameter): 10^-2 seconds
100 microns (ten cell diameters): 1 second
1000 microns (1 mm): 100 seconds
10 mm: 3 hours
1 meter: 3 years!

p136 The factors of fitness of water for physiological circulation are summarized:

the excellent solvation properties of water
the incompressibility of water
the relatively low density of water - commensurate with the power output of biological pumps
the relatively low viscosity of water and blood (more viscous material could not be pumped through tiny capillaries.)

p137 Another Henderson quote - solvent action

p142 Chart summary of viscosity of water

p143 Capillaries of elephant similar to those of a bat and a shrew.

p145 Chart of water's fitness for the circulatory system

p146 Fitness of water for oxidative metabolism

p147 Water & CO₂ and the bicarbonate miracle.

p148 Good summary of H₂CO₃ -> H⁺ + HCO₃^- -> CO₂ + H₂O^{in lungs} and the general discussion of the oxidation process in the body which solves the CO₂ excretion problem.

p148 "So the solution to the problem of the CO₂ excretion problem resides in the properties of water and CO₂, which are themselves end products of oxidation."

p149 Not only the problem of CO₂, water takes care of the problem of heat dissipation. Circulation carries heat to the periphery where the high heat of vaporization efficiently exhausts the excess heat.

p149-51 Bicarbonate buffering regulates pH

p151 pKa value and the fitness for anaerobic exertion.

p153 Mentions Henderson again, also Edsall & Wigman

p153 Effects of low solubility of O₂. Compares air and water with ratios. Rules out high metabolic rates for water-breathers.

p154 "In Sum: The reaction of water with CO₂ - a waste product of oxidation - to produce bicarbonate solves two basic and very different physiological problems: ridding from the body of an end product of oxidative metabolism, and maintaining acid-base homeostasis. Thus, both the problem of excreting a major end product of oxidative metabolism and the problem of acid-base balance are both elegantly solved in the properties of the same remarkable compound, water. It is a solution of breathtaking elegance and parsimony." Chart 6.4 on the bicarbonate process.

p155 "Again, although the facts are not in dispute and the excretion of heat and CO₂ is in every physiology textbook, the real wonder of how the players conspire so intelligently and parsimoniously to achieve the end of heat and CO₂ excretion remains widely ignored." "Moreover, before this astonishing ensemble of fitness can be exploited, before there can be oxidative metabolism, there must be oxygenic photosynthesis to provide the oxygen and reduced-carbon fuels. ...water has just the right suite of properties - letting through the right light and so forth to enable photosynthesis - ... drawing water through the soil .. erosion of the rocks to generate the very water-retaining properties of soil ..." "The fact that water's fitness for photosynthesis is prior to, and necessary to exploit her fitness for, oxidative metabolism represents yet another case of a teleological sequence or heirarchy where one end A, dependent on one property or suite of properties of water X, must be satisfied prior to the serving of a second end B, which is also dependent on a suite of properties of water Y, different from those involved in serving end A. Before there can be oxidative metabolism there must be photosynthesis and water as the matrix of life must be fit for both processes."

p156 This is a wonderful page, a reverie to life and the extraordinary fitness of water that suggests that it was "prefigured" "from the beginning of time".

p156 "our being was only possible because of the supreme fitness of nature through the properties of water for beings of our physiological design. And this implies that the fitness of nature for our biological design was prefigured into the order of nature from the beginning of time. This must count as a scientific discovery of the first order, which in itself has profound implications regarding our place in the ultimate ground of being."

7. Water and the Cell

p157 Ball and Nilsson & Petterson quotes.

p157-159 Good summary of the temperature ranges for life.

p160 cites Miller & Orgel on the characteristic on the characteristic instability of organic compounds with a summary of lifetime vs temperature.

p161 cites Henderson then Haldane & Needham. The metastability of organic compounds enhances the possibility for complexity but needs a relatively small temperature range.

p162 Discusses hydrogen bonding a van der Waals forces and suggests that it is these bonds that the process of cooking breaks while leaving the covalent bonds intact. It does break down the 3-D shape of the proteins. But these weak but not-too-weak bonds allow the macromolecules of life to perform their distinctive functions, and involve energies in the ranges such that they can be constructed with the energy of ATP and the energy system of life.

p163-165 In a section named The Prime Coincidence he discusses the fact that life must have a liquid matrix, and that water is a nearly ideal liquid which includes the range 0-50C where the biochemistry works, a tiny fraction of the temperature range of the universe. Chart 7.1 summary of water's fitness for life.

p165 Why Water is Weird - further discussion of hydrogen bonding and the geometry of the water molecule. .. unique stickiness or cohesiveness of water

p167 A list of of 12 of the anomalous properties of water from London South Bank Univ's list of 73. Many of these properties have the hydrogen bonding as at least part of their origin.

p168 Water as the incomparable solvent. Cites Alok Jha , Felix Franks and Lawrence Henderson on these solvent properties. Then quotes Ball on p 169. Fig 7.2 and 7.3 to illustrate the hydrogen bonds.

p170 The hydrophobic force - the one exception to the solvation powers of water. Typified by oil and water. Non-polar molecules will tend to clump in water because the hydrogen-bonded structure does not attract them. Ball cited: one of the most important properties of water. Helps form lipid bilayers, helps drive protein folding. "its hydrophobic 'flaw' is almost as important as its power to dissolve polar compounds.

p172 Reflection on viscosity. With 20 orders of magnitude in nature, water constrained within one order of magnitude for its functions of circulation, erosion, ocean currents and its role as matrix for the cell. Brownian bombardment would disrupt delicate cell structures if viscosity were much lower. Diffusion would not work well if much higher.

p173 Proton wires: long chains of linked water molecules allow protons to be transported in the cell without moving the individual protons between the locations. Grotthuss mechanism - proton power - cross-membrane proton gradients. Cites Nick Lane and Harold Morowitz. Role in photosynthesis and oxidative phosphorylation.

p175 Szent-Gyorgye "Life is water, dancing to the tune of solids." In addition to all its optimized properties, water's role in proton flows makes it a key player in cell energy processes. All this goes beyond my understanding, so I need to study it more.

p176 Cites Gerald Pollack's "Water and the Cell"

8. Conclusion

p188 "Water has testified, and its testimony is unequivocal. Life and humankind do occupy, after all, a unique place in the natural order."

p188 "In water's magic, the Copernican principle is well and truly overturned."

Denton's case for teleology

"not mere cosmic happenstance."

Idea that multiple unique properties of water work together in a way essential to life.

p19 Includes a discussion of the viscosity of ice, which I hadn't seen before.

In this extraordinary fact we glimpse the first example of what may only be described as the transcending fitness of water for life as it exists on Earth."

He sees teleology in the way that water draws the minerals from rocks and then provides them to life.

p27 Chart 1.2 of the above

Design of transcending elegance

p34 Chart 1.5 on teleology.

Teleology is seen in the tectonic recycling process that has kept life's nutrients available over a vast period of time.

Teleology is seen in these two self-regulating and life-essential cycles which rest on the unique properties of water. p49 "So just as water delivers itself by its own properties to the thirsty land via the hydrological system, water by its own powers delivers itself to the mantle, and thereby activates the whole tectonic system, and sustains it over long ages."

Invokes Kant to argue that the tectonic recycling is "not a mere machine" because of "formative reciprocity".

After discussing life's processes, returns to summarize the case for teleology in the whole scenario. p122 The last paragraph is a brief summary,and the whole page is a summary of water's fitness for life. "...water, by its own powers, delivers itself to the land, erodes the rocks, provides the minerals for terrestrial ecosystems, rests in the soil, and transits as needed through the soil to the roots. Now we see that it is also by water's own powers that it raises itself and its precious cargo of minerals from the root to the leaf, enabling the production of life-giving oxygen through photosynthesis. In all such instances, a prior element of fitness is exploited to use another element in the ensemble of fitness. It is even more marvelous when...a succession of ends (each utilizing a unique element of fitness of water) are achieved by using a prior unique element or elements of fitness, making up what amounts to a teleological sequence or rational hierarchy of means to ends."

After details of the incredible coupling of handling CO2 and the acid-base balance on p154-155, an eloquent "song of praise" about water's role in physiology.

p156 This is a wonderful page, a reverie to life and the extraordinary fitness of water that suggests that it was "prefigured" "from the beginning of time".

Another reiteration of all the coordinated properties of water.

A testimony to the uniqueness of life

p188 "Water has testified, and its testimony is unequivocal. Life and humankind do occupy, after all, a unique place in the natural order."

p188 "In water's magic, the Copernican principle is well and truly overturned."

Windows of Creation

Evidence from nature

Is the universe designed?

Reasonable faith

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