FYI ... if you have the time and interest!
Every once in a while somebody decides we know all the physical laws and the physics budget can safely be eliminated. Then somebody notices something that doesn't fit and it's off to the races once more.
So the above statement might be true in 952 AD, in 1750, in 1885, again in 1904, again in 1943, again in 1967, and again in 2112. In the inbetween years there are some loose ends and the statement is not true. It is not true in 2005, everything is up in the air again.
"... we can draw quantitative consequences with regard to the static and dynamic information content of DNA. We estimated that the information necessary to govern the >105 chemical reactions sec–1 cell–1 in the 6*1013 human cells requires >1019 bits sec–1 that cannot be supplied from the static sequential information content of DNA ~109 bits for more than 10–10 sec."
to
"... we can draw quantitative consequences with regard to the static and dynamic information content of DNA. We estimated that the information necessary to govern the >105 chemical reactions sec–1 cell–1 in the 6*1013 human cells requires >1019 bits sec–1 that cannot be supplied from the static sequential information content of DNA ~109 bits for more than 10–10 sec."
So sorry! -- bb.
Amazing. Both of you.
I would sincerely appreciate both of your undertaking a brief summary (abstract) of this article to insure I'm correctly following it....and then post them, of course.
How does DNA "tap" into the force field of life? is a question that came to my mind, but I'm not sure I'm imagining in the right direction.
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." Any "life" given us is a share in a field of already existing life?
It seems that one cannot understand the beginnings of life without understanding the end. Thus despite all the electical currents through the primordial ooze (Miller, Urey, et al.), I personally doubt whether we will ever penetrate the mind of God (with apologies to Paul Davies) to this extent.
All in Him that made all....
I am just reading (again) about Kurt Godel and the Uncertainty Principle. It is a proven theorem in mathematics that posits that some truths can be true but unprovable. Also there is no way to identify or predict unprovable truths. I think there may be a conection with some of this reasoning. It seems intuitively true that the Monist view might explain all but it might never be possible to provide a proof.
"If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an 'oomph', this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, 'Well, that is the funny behavior of the "oomph".'"The "universal mind field" only "explains" things because you can attribute any properties to it you choose to imagine. Fairies would be equally useful as an explanatory mechanism.( Richard Feynmann, "The Meaning of It All", New York: Perseus Press, 1999, pp. 19-20. )
Biological organization is physical ordering. Both, which are physical ordering, are accompanied by an increase in entropy.
"Elitzur (1993) points out, “the most essential attribute of randomness is the absence of connection between the states of the system’s components.”
No, in reality, the idea of randomness is always associated with a particular interaction governed by physical laws. That is fundamental. The value of the variables in the interaction have a certain spread that depends the sensitivity of the interaction and other minor external effects. Absence of connection is trivial and means just that. In biology, physics, chemistry and structure are the connection.
" ...if you think that only material, physical, tangible entities are real." If it's not physical, then it doesn't exist. The tangible intellectual constructs of a sentient, conscious being have a physical basis as the machinery of the being. W/o that machinery, their is nothing tangible, or real. "then the physical laws must possess an informative content. And there’s another very interesting thing about the physical laws: They are in the main all laws of conservation. It has been observed that the amount of information required for conservation of a system seems not to be high, at least in comparison with the amount of information needed for a system to organize itself, modify its behavior, develop, evolve"
The amount of information needed for a physical system to organize itself is contained within the laws of physics. In particular the chemistry and structure that determine the interactions, rest entirely on the laws of physics. The paritculars of the chemistry of organic compounds allow life to emerge given the physics and chemistry of all else. The law of entropy includes. that if it can happen, it will.
"The laws of physics … are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information."
Davies ignores too much of what information is contained in the physical world. Thus his conclusion, " Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules.", is NG. As is, "Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural.’ Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.” Life circumvents none of it. The machine came about, because the laws of physics and chemistry were followed absolutely. THe laws are not incidental, they are absolutely how the machine came about and govern it's workings completely.
"There is a need to account for, not only the fact that life cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of what is “chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’”; but even more importantly, that life seems to work to counter the outcomes predicted by the physical laws."
Life may seem counter to the physical laws, but only because of a failure to know and understand both. The fact that you can't exhaustively explain something means nothing as far as the reality of it goes. It only means you can't explain it, which says nothing about whether, or not you ever will be able to explain it.
"Boltzmann, whose hypothesis was that the second law is a law of disorder, of chaos."
Boltzman beleived in S=kln(omega), where omega is the number of states available. The concepts of disorder, or chaos have nothing to do with omega. They are qualitative concepts that have no validity, other than qualifying some particular reality. The reality itself is well ordered.
"But what if the sine qua non hallmark or signature of living organisms is that they work by converting thermodynamic entropy into Shannon entropy? This would mean that although the two entropies belong to non-isomorphic probability spaces, living organisms preeminently possess a mechanism to bring the two probability spaces into direct relations."
Shannon entropy refers to the state of some detector. It starts out huge and ends up small, or zero, when some input places it in a particular state. If the Shannon machine is working, Shannon's law says the entropy must decrease in an "interaction". Shannon's entropy is subjective, not objective, and as such they remain independent. Shannon's entropy depends on a sentient being's determination, based on his own qualification and choices-subjective. Physical entropy depends on physics-objective.
"“Living organisms do not tend towards the physical equilibrium related to their initial and boundary conditions, but [at all times] act in order to preserve their distances from the deathly physical equilibrium” predicted by the second law."
The at all times part is not true. The organism acts according to it's composition arranged machinery. A helper T-cell will engulf an AIDs particle and a smoker might continue. An engine will run as long as it's gassed up and oiled, until it wears out. The wears out part renders Bauers principle moot.
"All these results together show that the source of biological information is ultimately to be found in the Bauer principle, in the same manner as the source of physical information is to be found in the [least-]action principle of physics.”
The action principle applies to all biology.
"Grandpierre argues that, in addition to the other fields identified by science, there is also a “biofield” or an organic zero-point vacuum field that is the carrier of biological information. An analogy might help to explicate the theory. The Internet is a “universal” information field that can be accessed by anyone who has the proper equipment."
The internet and it's posters, observers ect all rely on physics. Nothing more needs to be supposed. There is no biofeild, because it can be shown that it is not independent of other fields. ie. QED, or those contained in the standard model. That is, because biochem accounts for life.
"DNA is “smart enough” to be a router for incoming information addressed specifically to a particular receiver. "
DNA is not even in the picture when someone's consciousness is tossed in the garbage with amphetamine.
I always remember the teaching, "remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." So many try to prove that God exists by grasping, pleading and handwaving. It's all for naught. Here's what God said about it in Matt 16:1- "The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.
He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away."
The sign of Jonah is the Holy Spirit, the Bread(of life) prayed for in the Lord's prayer. There is nothing else to be found outside of what He taught when He came here to teach. When you look at man scientifically, all you will find is a machine made of dust. That's a machine made with the capacities of God, in the likeness of God.
Since God is real, He also has a physical makeup. That is hidden and will not be uncovered. That is the meaning of the churubim waving the flaming sword barring return to the garden and Matt16.
The spirit of one's life is not the machine, but the tangible principles, holdings, beleifs, ect of one's life. There is no spirit, or soul driving the physics and resulting in, or providing for consciousness. The physics is the dust that gives you the capacity to create and drive your spirit. Jesus recreated the Spirit of God within Him as a man. His soul came first and was the Father. A man's soul comes later and has the Spirit created by the man. In the image and likeness of God means man is also a trinity. That is, because He was created to have eternal life.
"Darwin studiously avoided abiogenesis in his major works — hence the insistence on the forum that the “theory of evolution” does not include abiogenesis. Perhaps his avoidance of the issue was for political reasons, we don’t know"
Perhaps abiogenesis is not in the theory of evolution, because it is not part of the theory!
Perhaps Darwin was smarter than the average semi-literate creationist. Darwin was not as money grubbing as the creationist scam artists who promote nonsense to make Christians look stupid.
At the heart of the origin-of-life problem lies a fundamental question: What is it that we are trying to explain the origin of?Well, we know a basic requirement for life is putting things together at the right time and in the right sequence. Though this can be applied to the universe and abiogenesis – this obviously applies to an organism as a whole. IOW, what makes a nose a nose if no one knows the nose is supposed to be a nose --- DNA? DNA just takes us back to the molecular level.
- Harmke Kamminga
I realize that I am toying with resonance synonymous hyperbole in birth, but the nose cell knows to become a nose and science reeks of materialism in its explanation. To say things have evolved as thus and have become different does nothing to explain the knowledge of a nose cell which became part of a nose rather than a toe (though the feet can smell and the nose can run). What is constructing the ‘processes’ for the nose as opposed to the toes? Is this as obvious as something in front of your face or is this something that must be cut off in spite… For DNA to say “You go on this side and you go on that side. You become this and you become that…” Cannot be intelligent design or beauty – it is all in the molecules without purpose, plan, or ultimate structure?
Ah, and we must be sure to keep teleology out of this equation because design would ruin the current paradigm :
The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the protest lately made by some naturalists against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. They believe that many structures have been created for the sake of beauty, to delight man or the Creator (but this latter point is beyond the scope of scientific discussion), or for the sake of mere variety, a view already discussed. Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory. I fully admit that many structures are now of no direct use to their possessors, and may never have been of any use to their progenitors; but this does not prove that they were formed solely for beauty or variety. No doubt the definite action of changed conditions, and the various causes of modifications, lately specified, have all produced an effect, probably a great effect, independently of any advantage thus gained. But a still more important consideration is that the chief part of the organisation of every living creature is due to inheritance; and consequently, though each being assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature, many structures have now no very close and direct relation to present habits of life.
Darwin
snore..........snore.....snore......