Why Do We Need Life To Create
Life?
LIFE EXISTS because of information along DNA. This information is in the form of groups of chemicals that are strategically positioned to create life's blueprint. The blueprint is composed of extraordinary patterns that organizationally function to sustain and perpetuate life. In the last chapter we examined how natural processes destroy patterns and therefore information. In this chapter we examine the belief that natural processes created these patterns and show why this is a practical impossibility.
Order versus Complexity
When someone tries to conceptually create life using only natural processes, he or she is trusting that nature will do just the opposite of what dripping water does to ink on a letter. The belief that life assembled itself requires faith that the chemicals self-organized and, in terms of information, that an ink blob wrote a letter by itself. Were this to happen, the chemical arrangement would be a kind of blueprint. That's because life's blueprint (DNA) instructs other chemicals how to assemble themselves.1 The idea that dripping water will rearrange ink to produce a blueprint is a neat idea. However, the difficulty is that only a miracle can account for the kind of blueprint needed to explain the creation of life.2 The basic problem is that accidents aren't miracles — they are accidents. But we need a miracle of the kind that dust, dirt, and slime cannot deliver. Lightning bolts notwithstanding, 3 chemically ordered blobs don't make life — they make crystals.4 And this is where much of the confusion has been with regard to the question of life's origin.
Numerous books have been written over the past several decades that promulgate one central theme: Natural processes brought life into being.
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But these authors have confused order for complexity, and have misunderstood the thermodynamic quantity called entropy.5 We discussed both the history and confusion over this word in an earlier chapter.6 It's easy to get natural processes to create ordered arrangements. It is done whenever a winter storm creates snowflakes.7 But when considered as a total system, these processes lose information. If we are to learn how life was created, then we require a process that destroys order and creates complexity. In other words, we need the exact opposite of ordered arrangements — we need a natural process that will produce a near-random arrangement. But these requirements are not as simple as some have supposed.
For example, were we to take a deck of playing cards and examine whatever sequence of fifty-two cards a particular shuffle might produce, it could be argued that the specific arrangement of cards seen would have had a near impossible likelihood of occurring. And yet, there in full view it exists for all to see. It is then said that this is also true for an unlikely chemical sequence appearing in the DNA strand of a primeval cell. But this kind of rhetoric is deceptively naive and is hardly a convincing illustration that life could have so easily overcome the statistical impossibility of its appearance on earth.
The Magic Shuffle
The problem that confronts us in explaining the origin of life is that we must explain the appearance of a particular nucleotide sequence, mainly, the one found in the DNA of living cells, and this is enormously more difficult to explain than the appearance of any sequence from a pristine shuffle of fifty-two cards. In the latter case, the probability is 100 percent that a sequence will appear, whereas with life the probability that the necessary sequence will occur is, as a practical matter, zero. Yet we find the playing card example along with other similar illustrations in books written to convince the uninitiated that, as a matter of principle, natural processes not only can produce life, but most likely did.8
The argument that a near-impossible arrangement can easily appear (some sequence of the fifty-two cards) is erroneous because it presumes that each of the many trillions upon trillions of ways that the cards can be arranged 9 organizationally functions to satisfy life's requirements. But this is hardly the case. For example, to explain the origin of life we must explain the origin of a particular sequence of nucleotide bases in the DNA blueprint
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that instructs cells to manufacture protein, including the production of three thousand vastly complex enzymes that supply the "workmen" responsible for doing the actual assembly.10
The blueprint also contains detailed specifications that produce the heart, stomach, kidneys, and gall bladder, along with every other organ and gland in the body.11 It also instructs the manufacture of muscles, nerves, and skin, together with the myriad body parts including eyes, ears, and brain.12 And if that isn't enough, the blueprint contains additional instructions responsible for the manufacture of reproductive organs that perpetuate the blueprint by producing new human beings! Yet as impressive as this may be, what is staggering is that, as a practical matter, only one kind of protein will work in each case.13 All the others tend to be worthless, not only because they function improperly, but because they self-destruct! Figuratively speaking, this includes the particular fifty-two card sequence that our random shuffle delivers.
Some people have argued that if we kept shuffling long enough, then the required magic sequence must appear. But what they fail to understand is that the magnitude of the information (complexity) found in even simple cells is so vast, that to suppose it was produced by natural processes in a universe as young as 13 billion years and as small as 30 billion light-years is to abdicate one's cognitive faculties — not because we can't accede to its occurrence in our minds, but because the constraints imposed by the limited space-time "fabric" render the event aberrant. Although oversimplified, we can express the difficulty by saying that the cards will wear out long before the magic combination can occur!
Did Life Assemble Itself?
People are divided on the question as to whether life assembled itself. A large number believe that life is a miracle created by God, but many others avoid the idea by believing that life assembled itself. Regardless of one's persuasion, however, either belief requires faith. No human being saw how life developed; yet, surprisingly, those with the most to say sometimes behave as though they did. If we're to believe that life assembled itself, then let's at least identify scientific reasons for doing so. But when we look for hard data we find not facts but materialism, i.e., a philosophy that impersonates science. This philosophy champions the idea that only matter and its motion exist and, therefore, concludes that life must have assembled itself because there are no other options.
If you are one who believes that nothing exists except matter and its motion, then you believe in this philosophy — you believe in materialism. For you, self-assembly is a must. It happened because, if it didn't, life wouldn't be here. The reason for your belief is you've assumed that nothing exists except matter and its motion. This assumption is obviously related to the discussion in a preceding chapter where we noted that scientific calculations based on
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data from electron microscopy of living cells show that the belief that life accidentally arose is an act of faith and not science. Likewise with self-assembly — it too is an act of faith.
For example, suppose we needed a computer to control traffic flow in and out of New York City, how would we acquire it? The answer is we'd first carefully analyze the auto traffic in and out of the city, and then give the data to a team of engineers. When the design phase was complete after, say, several years, they would select a company that constructed computers using complicated electrical devices and integrated circuits. These devices and circuits would be manufactured by other companies using technology developed over half a century by thousands upon thousands of trained, skilled, and thinking people. But let's stop and consider that the neurological pathways controlled by the brain in a human body are so much more complicated than auto traffic that the biological control defies description.
For example, a single nerve cell can be many times thinner (four microns) than a strand of hair, yet have up to 100,000 electrical receptors that receive messages from many hundreds of other nerve cells — and at propagation rates up to 250 miles per hour. The total length of these neurological wires in the human body is estimated to be several hundred thousand miles. As for the brain itself, its complexity lies beyond anything that can be imagined. By way of perspective, the brain of even the simplest insect exhibits a level of complexity that exceeds all of the human relationships possible on earth today. Where then is the basis for believing that interstellar debris eventually assembled itself into human civilization? Everything we know shows that natural processes destroy information. Therefore the notion that they systematically amassed unfathomable quantities of it makes no sense whatsoever. It would be different if we had evidence to the contrary, but we don't.
With this in view, consider the kinds of beliefs regarding life's origin presently rampant in our society. The notion of biological self-assembly is growing in popularity.14 Life's blueprint is becoming increasingly accepted as the inevitable result of natural processes within the physical world. The belief is that these processes transformed nonliving matter into living, loving, and laughing people over a time period of billions of years. Some people require very little evidence to accept such ideas, and the source of greatest comfort for such thinking has come from studies on bits and pieces of a substance called "RNA" — a chemical template used by cells to manufacture protein.15
Can Man Create Life's Template?
Many experiments and theories have been proposed in an attempt to understand life's basic chemistry.16 Some of these studies involve the use of enzymes, which are proteins that speed up life's chemical reactions. Enzymes are loaded with biological information, and to include them in any experiment that seeks to "make life" is equivalent to creating life from life.
However, other experiments are done in which enzymes are not present.
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These investigations thus attempt in some way to simulate the chemical environment that may have existed on our planet when it came into being. These experiments have shown that under very special conditions certain chemicals will combine to create short RNA. These short segments of artificially created RNA can, in turn, be made to procreate other short RNA, and the chemical reproduction has given rise to the belief that this is how life may have begun.17 It has also created the false hope that life may one day be artificially created. It's easy to see how the experimental results reinforce such beliefs. Whenever something self-replicates it presents a life-like appearance. It's thus easy to think that one may be looking at the onset of life as one observes these tiny RNA segments chemically reproducing in a laboratory environment.
However, the experimental results can be very misleading. It's instructive to realize that many nonliving things multiply. Crystals do it all the time. And dust, for example, interacts with water-laden clouds to create snowflakes. But RNA growth is not identical to snowflakes, and segments of RNA have been created in the laboratory that procreate other short RNA segments. Yet despite the different mode of replication, snowflakes and RNA are not dissimilar. The reason is that each shares something in common that explains why neither can ever produce life. Let's see what this is.
The first thing we recognize is that when natural structures come into being — e.g. a hurricane — they undergo an increase in complexity. Many authors have seized upon this tendency of natural systems to spontaneously form structure to support the belief that natural processes could have similarly produced the biological structures that manifest life.18 But this is not true, and to see why it's not true we need to clearly understand the role that complexity plays in the physical systems of the universe.
When scientists mathematically describe a physical system that spontaneously forms a structure (e.g., a snowflake, a crystal, or a hurricane), the equations tell us that in a very literal sense the complexity of a structure can only grow at the expense of the complexity of other structure in surrounding regions.19
To recall an example of a previous chapter, the complexity of the walnut at the pancake's center can only grow if the complexity of the surrounding regions decreases. This is equivalent to saying that the walnut acquires information at the expense of information elsewhere. In other words, they grow in structural complexity at the expense of the complexity that is available from their surroundings. We can think of these physical entities consuming information the way we consume food. But if we ask what is the source of the ultimate information that is drawn upon in this growth process, the answer is that, except for intelligence, we don't know. Random motions of physical matter are possible. Although unlikely, they may produce patterns and therefore, some information. But such motions cannot produce the magnitude of information needed to explain life.
Natural things can only multiply complexity by destroying the complexity
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of their surroundings. This is how the biochemists are able to create the short segments of RNA discussed above. As a practical matter, the amount of information present in these abbreviated molecules is derived from the information present in the chemical bath used to generate them, and cannot exceed the information content of this bath. This criterion defines the maximum information that can ever be produced in artificially generated RNA in the absence of enzymes.
As discussed above, if enzymes are present, the chemical bath produces significantly longer RNA chains because "life" is effectively being used to generate "life," i.e., the enzymes are derived from other life and carry genetic information otherwise unobtainable by the chemical bath. However when the enzymes are absent, the RNA strands are much shorter.20
The implicit assumption that apparently inspires these and similar investigations is the belief that RNA molecules of much greater complexity can be experimentally created if the "right chemicals and conditions" can be found. The principal reason for this hope seems to rest in the basic misunderstanding between thermodynamic and genetic entropy discussed in a previous chapter.
In summary, the confusion between crystallography and biology has nurtured the illusion that chemicals can self-assemble themselves into meaningful structures. This is particularly true in studies with RNA.21 However, what actually occurs in these experiments is that the total system undergoes a loss of information, and no amount of chemical manipulation can make it otherwise.22
Of course the temptation is to believe that if the right chemical "seed" can be found, then it will ratchet itself into higher structural levels through self-assembly. The problem with this goal, however, is that the magnitude of information needed to regulate life is unavailable to the chemical bath. The reason is that the information content of the entire inorganic universe is much too small. This is why we need life to get life. And the mystery which confronts us is that there is no known natural source that could have produced the needed amount of information in living structures.
Further Implications
Aside from the new insights that relate complexity to information, a very basic difference still separates modern science from the older ideas, and it would do us well to review the division; namely,
The independent existence of the physical world apart from human observers cannot be logically defended. The reason is that quantum laws are statistical
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descriptions of observations — they do not describe an "independent physical reality."
Let's now apply this twentieth-century insight to a fossil. We can assign numbers to the biological structure of a fossil that quantify the size of the blueprint totally describing it. Furthermore, our description of the fossil will contain information that measures the fossil's complexity. If now we examine, say, three fossils of separate species that existed over different time periods, we will produce three blueprints, one for each of the species. We will discover that each is more complex than the one before, and that the simplest contains far more information than what exists within the entire natural universe. This then raises two questions: (1) What is the source of the biological information, and (2) why is it increasing with the passage of time.
The New Generalized Second Law speaks to the magnitude of this complexity and states that, on average, the observer must lose rather than gain information. This implies that the fossil record should show a decrease, rather than an increase, in the complexity of the biological structures it preserves. Since this is not the case, it suggests that the appearance of greater and greater information is not the result of its natural production, but, instead, a progressive revelation of information previously programmed into the entire biological system. The sheer magnitude of the information, and the systematic growth of fossil complexity with the passage of time are not explained by natural hypotheses — whether natural selection or otherwise.
The ordinary Second Law could not address this question because it can only describe the state of a fossil at times of rest (equilibrium). When the complexity of the biological structure of a later fossil was observed to be greater than that of an earlier one, we knew of no reason why natural machinery could not exist between these two equilibrium or "rest" states to permit it to happen. Furthermore, our older science did not allow us to quantify complexity; nor was there awareness of the fundamental importance of the observer's informational role in regulating the "locations and speed" (phase point) of physical matter. Thus, there was no reliable way to know whether the magnitude of the information available to an observer through natural processes in the universe was inconsistent with the fossils.
This is now changed. Today, we know that the complexity found in biological structures is too large to have been produced by a natural process. In addition, the ordinary Second Law is now replaced by the New Generalized Second Law which is not limited to the before and after rest states, but is valid between the two. Moreover, it is not limited to "thermodynamic variables" (such as temperature and pressure), but is valid for any observable. The New Generalized Second Law imposes constraints on the changes that are possible between an earlier and a later fossil (the before and after rest states), and it tells us that natural machinery does not exist to systematically increase the complexity of biological structures with the passage of time.
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What's important about this conclusion is that it does not rest upon a particular explanation (such as natural selection). Rather, it is the basic result that regulates physical matter. This indicates that regardless of what we might conjecture to be the alleged "natural" explanation for the progression of increased complexity in the fossil record, it will be untrue in the same way a patent examiner in Washington, D.C., knows an alleged invention for a perpetual motion machine is untrue.
The Meaning of the New Second Law
What does the New Generalized Second Law teach regarding the natural flow of information? It teaches that nature is a sieve whose structures undergo deterioration and, therefore, information loss with the passage of time. Since physical processes are not able to retrieve this information, and since intelligence is the only known "pump" that can reverse the process, intellect could hardly have resulted from processes that lose what it produces.
Quantum physics teaches that intelligence exists in disunion from the things it measures, and that the sum total of physical reality is composed of two entities: quantum and classical objects. The first are subject to quantum laws, whereas the second (spirit) are exempt from them. The New Generalized Second Law is the result of quantum laws, and teaches that an observer in the universe loses information as time passes.
Why is information lost with the passage of time? Because if we measure physical things and then allow them to change in a natural way, they take on forms that minimize the information in our description subject to predictions based on earlier measurement. When we apply this consideration to living systems, we expect the fossil record to contain biological structures that decrease rather than increase their organization. The reason is that if the sequence of these structures is identified with natural change, they represent distributions of biological components that minimize the information in their description by an observer. But the fossil record does not show an information loss; instead it reveals an evolutionary process that, on average, produced information. Thus the systematic growth of biological complexity recorded in the fossil record cannot be understood in terms of natural processes in the light of the New Generalized Second Law.
The concepts of information and uncertainty may seem elusive to us because unlike our older science, these new insights have no simple mechanical interpretation. Likewise it's not easy to visualize an observer undergoing a loss of information. This too has no simple analog. Therefore, let's try to understand these important new concepts in a more familiar setting. It's worth the effort because the information loss taught by the New Generalized Second Law regulates every physical thing in the universe.
Picture a one-room schoolhouse with a window along an outer wall. Looking through the window from the outside we see a room with seven rows of desks, five to each row; they are all empty. Inside, thirty-five children
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are running helter-skelter, and from outside the building the teacher hears much noise and commotion. Looking through the window, she tries to see who's doing what, but the situation is complex because each child is doing something different. Upon her return to the classroom, how will she possibly recall the independent activity of the thirty-five children that are running helter-skelter inside? That's a lot of information to remember. But as she ponders this, all of a sudden one of the young people inside notices that the teacher is looking! He shouts and the loud warning is heard by all of his classmates. One by one, each child returns to a desk, and within moments all of the children are seated. Order returns to the classroom, and now it's easy to describe each child's whereabouts. In other words, what previously was complex has now become ordered. To describe the whereabouts of thirty-five children that are quietly seated in seven rows, each with five desks, requires less information than when each is up and running around.
We can liken the schoolroom to a crystal whose atomic particles are neatly lined up into rows. It resembles the ordered schoolroom and it's easy to describe. But when each of the particles is moving around helter-skelter, more information is needed to describe what's going on because the location of each particle is different at each instant of time.
Holding each piece of the system in easily identified fixed locations considerably reduces the needed amount of information. That's because ordered systems are less complex and, therefore, easier to describe. What previously was moving in complex ways is now quiet, still, and calm. And whereas we previously needed to call out each child's name and location at each instant of time when he or she was in motion, once seated, their location is specified by the position of his or her desk for all time. Moreover, since there are five desks in each row, we can even use one row number to identify each of five children in that row.
Now suppose that the teacher randomly selects groups of five children each and instructs them to form circles by holding hands. The information needed to describe each of the seven circles would increase because we could no longer use the same row number to specify the location of the five children. These seven groups, each with five children in a circle, can be likened to the production of small RNA molecules in a chemical bath. As the children change from a state of running helter-skelter into a state of seven circular groups, each with five children, the complexity of the schoolroom, and therefore the information, decreases. An observer's description of the room contains less information with the children organized into circular groups than with them running helter-skelter around the room.
In a similar way, when atomic ensembles crystallize into small RNA molecules in a chemical bath, the molecules are more complex than the ensembles. This was also true when the children formed circles; a group of five children is more complex than any one of the children considered separately. However each of the seven circles can be described by the same information. This is
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also true of the RNA molecules, because all of the molecules are essentially the same. Thus the overall information needed to describe the chemical bath decreases when RNA molecules form, because when all of the atomic ensembles are considered, their description as independent entities is more complex than when they coalesce into RNA molecules.
The more children we collect into groups (RNA), the less information we need to describe the schoolroom (chemical bath). That's because a complex situation has become less complex (more ordered) due to the repetition of seven identical groups of children (RNA). This is what happens in a test tube with a chemical bath. As the RNA multiplies, the complexity of the chemical mixture, taken as a whole, decreases. The key point, however, is that the maximum complexity one can obtain in any RNA molecule is limited by the inherent complexity that the phase change (crystallization) can draw upon within the overall system (chemical bath).
In systems that are void of life, the final product is pitifully small (on the order of ten to twenty informational nucleotides). The reason is that the reservoir of information that must be drawn upon to produce even a primitive component of life is so vast that it far exceeds the corresponding level of complexity of the "chemical bath" filling the volume of the universe. This is why test-tube experiments that produce RNA lengths of the order of one hundred informational nucleotides must be "primed" with life (e.g., enzymes); these proteins then become the source of the needed information that produces the longer lengths of meaningful RNA. But the lesson is the same: To get life you need life — nothing less will do!
Chapter Thirteen || Table of Contents
1. Green D. & Fleischer S. "On the Molecular Organization of Biology Transducing Systems" in: Kasha M. & Pullman B. eds. Horizons in Biochemistry (1962) Academic Press, NY.
2. Yockey H. Jour. Theor. Biology (1977) 67:377.
3. Ohno S. Nature (1973) 244:259 London.
4. Yockey H. Jour. Theor. Biol. (1974) 46:369.
5. Cairns-Smith A. Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life (1985) Macmillan, NY. Prigogine I. et.al. Physics Today (1972) 25:23. Eigen M. Naturwissenshaften (1971) 58:465. Bernal J. The Origin of Life (1967) World Publ., NY. Brillouin L. "Giant Molecules and Semiconductors" in" Kasha M. & Pullman B. eds. Horizons in Biochemistry. Lawless H. & Morrison P. eds. Search for the Universal Ancestors (1985) NASA Washington, DC. Scott J. The Sciences (1983) 23(6):38 Nov/Dec. Oparin A. ibid. Gatlin L. Sixth Berkeley Symp. Proc. Math. Stat. Univ. of Calif. Press, Berkeley.
6. Writers on origins wrongly present entropy in terms of a distribution in energy levels instead of the nucleotide bases that constitute the genome's ensemble of genetic messages.
7. It also occurs when chemists make adenine molecules by shining ultraviolet light on hydrogen cyanide.
8. Kitcher P. ibid.
9. A random shuffle of 52 playing cards can yield over 8X10 67 possible arrangements.
10. Ochoa S. Enzymatic Mechanisms in "The Transmission of Genetic Information" Kasha M. & Pullman B. eds. Horizons in Biochemistry.
11. Smith A. The Body (1986) Macmillan, NY.
12. Brandt P. & Yancey P. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (1980) Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mich.
13. Ycas M. ""The Protein Text" in: Yockey H. et.al. eds. Symposium on Information Theory in Biology (1958) Pergamon, NY II:70, Gatlinburg, TN (1956) Oct 29-31.
14. Capra F. The Turning Point (1982) Simon & Schuster.
15. Rich A. Transfer RNA and the Origin of Protein Synthesis (1981) Dept. of Biology, MIT Dec 12.
16. Jukes T. Adv. in Enzymol. (1978) 47:375.
17. Eigen M. et.al. "The Origin of Genetic Information: Sci Am. (1981) :88 Apr.
18. Orgel L. Jour. Mol. Biol. (1968) 38:381. Lohrmann R. et.al. Science (1980) 208:146.
19. Wolfgang Y. et.al. Treatise on Irreversible and Statistical Thermophysics (1982) ch. 1 (6:48) Dover Publ., NY.
20. In the absence of enzymes, a poly-C template in a 50:50 mixture of activated A and G monomers with lead ions yields 10:1 ratios of G:A showing over 90 percent correct base pairing; if zinc ions are present, a poly-C template with activated G monomers yield G chains with about 40 bases-cytosine (C), adenine (A), guanine (G).
21. Crick F. et.al. Origin of Life (1976) D. Reidel Publ. :389.
22. Hobson A. Concepts in Statistical Mechanics (1971) ch. 5 (4:137) Gordon & Breach.
