Creation Moment 8/9/2024 - Design Patterns SERIES: Structural Design Patterns

Where is the wise? 

where is the scribe? 

where is the disputer of this world?  

1 Corinthians 1:20

"Structural patterns are design patterns based on object-to-object relationships. For structural patterns, Andrews et al. identify six subcategories. 

Of these, the third is common currency.

Across cells, there are many common metabolites, including common storage forms of energy, such as ATP. Traditionally, this has been attributed to common ancestry, but there is a critical design-based reason for it. 

Using a common currency simplifies interactions between objects.

 For example, it’s easier to fill up your car with gasoline when

gasoline is a common currency because no matter where you travel, other people need gasoline for their cars, and so chances are you will find it for sale. Here’s another example: It is easier to buy groceries with a common currency, such as the U.S. dollar, because you don’t have to stop and exchange your money before making a purchase, likely paying a fee for doing so.

Cells face similar constraints. They rely on certain producers of energy at certain times and incur a cost for energy interconversions. Thus, ATP is likely a designed solution to the aforementioned requirements. Andrews et al. point out that the topological pattern of common currency has a “bow tie” architecture. 

In this type of architecture, many nutrients are turned into a common currency (the knot) which can then expand to accomplish many different things. 

This design motif requires an intelligent agent because the goals of the ecosystem and organisms must be evaluated before coming up with a currency that can work between lower-level objects. 

This entails an understanding of how everything will interrelate and what is possible in the design space of physics and chemistry, followed by planning and implementation. Only an intelligent agent has these capabilities, which are not accessible to random processes."

EN&V/EmilyReeves