Why Is Life A Miracle?
IN PREVIOUS CHAPTERS we noted that natural forces destroy information. We saw how they erode patterns, and we illustrated how a natural process can produce information in one location (the walnut) only by losing it elsewhere (the pancake). We referenced experiments that attempt to make bits and pieces of life's molecules, and explained that the complexity of these chemical patterns (short RNA) is limited by the information available to the bath. We also noted that thermal entropy is commonly confused for genetic entropy and said that snowflakes and ice cubes have very little information because they are ordered, whereas large amounts of it reside in living cells because they are complex. We saw how decades of ignoring this distinction led authors to pursue crystallography rather than biology, thereby nurturing the false belief that nature can create life. We also observed that to explain life's origin demands that we find the source of the DNA information that instructs the manufacture of life's parts and controls the biological processes by which the parts organizationally function. We explained that the New Generalized Second Law regulates the flow of information in an observer's description of the physical world, and that on average this information can never increase, but instead will decrease.
Can We Measure Information?
The reader will note that the word information appears seven times in the above passage and that it is in a common thread throughout our discussion on life's origin. Therefore, let's turn our attention toward this word and see if we can gather more insight into the concept of information. Had this concept been more clearly understood in older writings it's doubtful that
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order would have been confused for complexity. In the past, confusion between complexity and order was widespread, and it led to the erroneous belief that life's origin could be understood through an exchange process involving physical matter in other parts of the universe. This false notion still appears, even in recent times.1
Today, we know that life is not ordered — it is complex. Thus, to explain life we must explain the origin of complexity. It is easy to see why this is true. Living structures are atomic particles organized to live. Were we to find the wing of an airplane in one corner of a junkyard, its tail in another, and the engine buried beside a windshield, we all know that the parts couldn't fly. But when assembled into a plane, they do fly. The same is true of atomic particles. Just as an airplane consists of parts organized to fly, in the same way our body is made of atomic pieces that are organized to live.
We can think of the degree to which something is organized as its complexity. What's important about the time period in which we live is that several decades ago, scientists learned how to measure complexity. In scientific lingo, we discovered how to quantify the degree to which we can specify a physical structure and, therefore, the degree to which we can measure its complexity. But our yardstick doesn't have inches. It's a measuring rod that has units called "bits" of information.
In previous chapters we discussed how life makes life; of course, examples abound to illustrate the point. People make people, plants make plants, and pigs make pigs. But the question is: How small can something be and still make itself? Loosely speaking, the answer seems to be, as small as a large protein molecule. This protein structure can be thought of as an organic machine composed of chemical parts. What's significant is that if we submerge this organic machine into a bath composed of similar chemical parts, the protein's structure can direct these parts to assemble another organic machine just like itself.
The information contained in our description of the structure of protein can be likened to the decisions it would need to make were it to successfully supervise the assembly of another organic machine just like itself. Therefore, the minimum amount of information needed to describe protein is found by answering the following question: What are the fewest decisions that a machine needs to make in order for it to assemble itself? Not too long ago, a famous twentieth-century mathematician, John von Neumann, asked the same question. He discovered mathematically that a machine would need to make about fifteen hundred correct decisions, one after the other without error, in order to reproduce itself.2
We can measure the amount of information present in the structure of a protein molecule by thinking of each decision the machine must make as a bit of information. If we do this, von Neumann's answer can be expressed another way. The least information needed to describe a machine complex enough to guide its own reproduction is fifteen hundred bits. Thus, as an
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inch is a unit of length and a pound a unit of weight, a bit becomes a unit of information.
Phrased in this way, a bit of information becomes a measure of consecutive decisions between two alternate courses of action. When we say that the amount of information needed by a machine to reproduce itself must be at least fifteen hundred bits, what we mean is that the machine must make at least fifteen hundred consecutive decisions without error to faithfully replicate itself. If one decision is wrong, it's doomed, and its structure terminates in extinction.
Maxwell's Mysterious "Demon"
The organizational intricacies of protein reflect information on a scale that a Supreme Intelligence can produce, but that nature cannot. To see why this is true, let's think about a small imp who became known as "Maxwell's Demon."3 We will allow the imp to control a tiny window that connects two adjoining compartments. In your mind's eye, imagine two boxes joined by a common wall. In the middle of the wall, picture a tiny window that connects one box to the other. On one side of the window there's a shelf where the imp is perched.
The imp is able to open or close the window at will, and without effort. Both boxes contain air and from time to time, as a result of this air, a gentle breeze blows against either side of the window. The imp is told, "Open the window if the breeze on your side is strong; otherwise keep it shut."
Now this may seem like a simple request, but the question is, can the imp obey the instruction? Although it may seem like something he can do, it turns out that were he to successfully perform the required task, he would violate one of the most fundamental laws of science. It's worthwhile to learn why this is so, because we will not only uncover a fascinating insight regarding the origin of life, but we will also discover the answer to something that stumped the whole world for over half a century regarding Maxwell's demon.
We've said that each of the two boxes contains air. But air consists of tiny molecules which are atomic specks so small that about 10 thousand billion will fit onto the head of a pin. Furthermore, these miniscule dots are in a state of constant motion; we sense them each time we feel a breeze. A strong breeze means that they're moving fast whereas no breeze means that they're hardly moving.
Now suppose the imp opens the window each time a strong breeze occurs. If he consistently does this, all the fast-moving molecules will pass through the open window and into the box on the other side. But since he keeps the window closed when there is no breeze, the slow molecules will remain in the box where he's standing. Thus, the imp has succeeded in separating the fast and slow air molecules, putting the fast ones into the one box, and keeping the slow ones in the adjoining box. From a scientific point of view, faster air molecules mean a higher temperature and an increase in pressure.
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Therefore, our imp has created a pressure and temperature difference between the two boxes; i.e., he has created energy!
But how can Maxwell's demon work? How can he create energy? This question baffled the world for many years, and no one was able to offer a satisfactory answer. Scientists asked, "Why can't an imp open a window?" If he could, he certainly could separate the fast- and slow-moving air into separate compartments. The fast-moving molecules will travel to one side, and the slower ones will remain in the other.
No one questioned the fact that, at least in principle, the imp had created energy. Let's see how we know that this is true. To show that the imp has created energy, we can wait until he's collected all the fast-moving air on one side. When that is done, we'll open the window, but this time keep it open. Air from the high pressure side (box with the fast-moving molecules) will rush through the opening and into the other side. If a generator wheel is located near the window during the time it's open, the resulting gush of air can be made to turn the wheel of the generator and, thereby, make electricity. Therefore, the imp does create energy. But here's our dilemma: It's impossible to create energy in a closed box! So no one could figure out how the imp could do it!
Death of a Demon
Maxwell invented his demon in the 1800s, but not until 1929 did a scientist named Leo Szilard find the answer. The imp can't create energy — not because he's unable to open and close the window, but because he doesn't know when to do so. In other words, he doesn't have the information necessary to identify which air molecule is moving fast and which is moving slow. But what's even more important, it costs him energy to acquire the information he needs! In fact, Szilard did a careful analysis showing that it costs more energy than the imp can recover.4 Simply put, the process of creating energy forces you to lose it! We can phrase it yet another way: Information is equivalent to energy in the sense that to have one means you can create the other.
Let's now recall what makes biological structures live. It isn't the existence of their basic atomic particles, but rather the way these particles are organized. To create life is to create information that defines and controls organizationally functioning harmonies among nonliving parts; what's remarkable is that these harmonies "interplay" to produce a stable structure manifesting biological qualities that preserve, through self-replication, the information that defines and controls them.
In its simplest expression, to create life is to organizationally compose a living song from nonliving notes. Yet were we to bring the living melody of a pulsating structure into existence, it would mean that we would have also created the sheet music that imaged its organized tones. This sheet music is analogous to the information in an observer's description of a living structure. Just as the sheet music contains all of the notes of the song, so
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also does the information that describes a biological structure capture and image all of its complexity. But the magnitude of this information exists on so vast a scale that its origin defies logical understanding through any natural process within the space and time of the universe. In short, it has no rational explanation other than as the fingerprint of a Supreme Intelligence. The reason is that Mother Nature's IQ is much too low for her to have been the Genius that created life's near infinite blueprint.
We now catch a glimmer of the importance of the constraints that kept Maxwell's demon from acquiring unlimited information. How could the imp know how fast the air is moving? In some way or another, he must look. But when he does that, it costs him energy; "looking" involves the transfer of light energy for when he looks, at least one unit of light (a photon) will bounce off an air molecule, and into his eye. Light energy is used up in this process. Careful calculations show that the energy lost as light enters the imp's eye is more than the energy obtained when he traps the molecule.
Thus acquiring information to produce energy is not cost-effective. The energy spent by the imp for the amount of information he acquires exceeds the energy he can create when he uses this information in knowing when to open and close the window. But had our imp somehow gotten this information for free, he could have freely exchanged it for energy, i.e., he could have created energy. In this sense, the substance of what's real is the information that describes it. Although this concept might be new, the assurance we have that it's so stems from the fact that modern quantum laws do not describe independent physical things, but instead are statistical relations of our observations.
Modern science has given us a new and profoundly important tool by which to understand the world. For the first time in the history of mankind, we are able to measure the information needed to describe an object's complexity. But it costs us energy to acquire this information. The energy exchange connects us, as living agents, to the physical stuff we observe. Since physical reality is what we describe it to be, what we know to be real is the information in our description of it. This insight may be unsettling to the reader, so let's see if we can understand it from a somewhat different perspective.
First, let's note that "physical stuff" is composed of energy. Atomic bombs work by exchanging a tiny piece of physical stuff or matter for an enormous amount of energy. This energy is released in the form of light, heat, and wind. We saw earlier that Maxwell's demon could have exchanged information for energy. The reason he didn't is because he lacked the information that he needed to perform the exchange. Furthermore, to acquire this information would have cost him more energy than he would have been able to obtain by using it. This conclusion is something we said earlier and it bears repeating: The energy we spend to acquire information always exceeds the energy we can create from it. This discovery is new to our century and it has deep implications and profound ramifications.
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The Miracle of Life
Physical objects are described by information. Without it they are indescribable.The more complex the structure, the more information we need to describe it.5 Since the complexity of the object is measured by the magnitude of the information in its description, we can think of the information as "resident" within the object. In effect, one is synonymous with the other. This means that the information used by an observer to quantify complexity can be understood as the object's ultimate reality. In the absence of an observer, the object's existence cannot be logically defended. Appendix 5 provides further discussion on this point.
But how much information is needed to describe the things about us? Were we to calculate the information in our descriptions of things, what magnitude of complexity would we find in the numbers? What do the calculations reveal? For example, how much more information is in a jet airplane than in a roller skate? And how does the universe compare with a man?
In order to establish a basis for answering such questions, let's return to self-replication by a machine. We've seen that a machine needs at least fifteen hundred bits of information before it can assemble itself. Thus, since life makes life, the fifteen hundred bits is a measure of how small a living structure can be. With the invention of the electron microscope and its comparatively recent practical development, it has been possible for the first time in recorded history to actually study the interior of protein. The results in the two decades following such pioneering investigation have been startling. The mathematical result showing that fifteen hundred bits is the minimum information needed by a machine to replicate itself is consistent with the astonishing discovery that fifteen hundred bits is roughly the information existing in a large protein molecule.
Now, isn't it remarkable that protein just happens to possess enough information for the fifteen hundred consecutive decisions it must make without error to be replicated? It is remarkable, for the following reason.
Fifteen hundred bits is so vast that its origin from a natural process cannot be logically explained. For example, we might ask how fifteen hundred bits compare with the information content of their physical objects in our world? But it's so large that it doesn't compare. For example, the information stored in the world's largest library is under fifty bits, and all of human knowledge is of the order of sixty bits. How much information is present in the solar system? The answer is about one hundred seventy bits. And what about the universe? What is its information content? Here the estimate is two hundred thirty-five bits. These and other related matters are discussed in greater detail in Appendix 6.
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If the physical structure of all nonliving matter embraces about two hundred thirty-five bits, where did the fifteen hundred bits of a large protein molecule come from? The sensible answer is that it came from a Supreme Intelligence. But lest we lose our frame of reference, let's remember that life is more than protein. The smallest system of self-sustaining life isn't protein — it's a living cell. How much information does it contain? To answer that, let's consider something simple — a plantlike, one-cell entity called a "bacterium." What would you guess its information content to be? The answer may stagger you. It's millions of bits! This is why life is a miracle (see Appendix 6).
There is no rational basis to explain the source of so staggering an amount of information on the basis of natural processes in a universe as young and as small as ours, though it is 13 billion years old and 30 billion light-years wide. Yet, are not human beings more than simple, one-cell plants? And aren't you more complex than even a tiny assembly of cells? As to the origin of these things, the simplest answer imaginable is that a Supreme Intelligence who the Bible calls God designed it all. Why is so obvious an answer never even considered in ordinary publications dealing with life's origin? Just as we see animals existing at a higher level than plants, and we are higher than animals, is there any logical basis for not explaining the miraculous organization of biological structures as the design of an Intelligence who exists at a level incomprehensible to man?
The physical world bears witness to design in virtually every structure about us. Yet as guppies in the fishbowl of space-time, we still ask for proof that there is water! But is the proof not in the butterfly that flies and the flower that blooms? Does it not present itself in a starlit sky and the morning dew? Some can and do reject these things as proof. But what do they offer in its place? Can nonliving matter explain the very human experience of majestic sunsets and the time-tested music of Bach and Beethoven? Do these things not imply a designer whose most intricate of all structure challenges every physician who performs surgery on a human body?
Even the simplest of structures implies design. For example, earth's temperature depends upon light from the sun which in turn comes from intricate nuclear processes that work because a neutron weighs slightly more than a hydrogen atom. But were it the other way around, the sun along with all other stars in the universe would collapse and bathe earth with deadly radiation that would destroy all life.
Some believe that everything that we see and measure came into being by itself, including this particular mass relationship. But what is the basis for such belief? Certainly not the facts modern science has uncovered with regard to the information content of biological structures.
The most primitive organism implies the prior existence of at least two thousand enzymes — each a fantastically complex protein of its own — and in a human cell these produce additional protein chains that number one hundred times this total. But people are more intricate that protein chains
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and biological structures more complicated than enzymes. Moreover these structures share unusual relationships with the physical constants of the universe. The human eye, for example, has its peak response at the one part of the spectrum where sunlight penetrates earth's water vapor (the water window). While survival pressures could have played a role, the fact that the sun has its peak emission in the same spectral region cannot be explained this way. When one examines the details, there is a mysterious relationship between the structure of the eye, the gravitational constant of the universe, the atomic unit of electric charge, and the quantum constant of Planck.7
The very young believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy. But what are we who are not so very young to believe? The materialistic myths of a prior century? Or the modern indications that an Intelligence has made himself known?
Chapter Fourteen || Table of Contents
1. Atkins P. The Second Law (1984) ch. 9:190 Freeman, NY. Anshen R. Convergence :166 in Cavalieri L The Double-Edged Helix (1985), Praeger, NY.
2. von Neumann J. Lectures on Probabilistic Logics and Synthesis of Reliable Organisms from Unreliable Components (1952) Cal. Inst. Tech., Pasadena Jan 4 -15. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata Burks A. ed. (1966) Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana.
3. Maxwell J. Phil. Mag. for January and July (1860) 20(21) Read at the Meeting of the British Association Aberdeen (1859) Sep 21. Theory of Heat (1871) London: Longmans Green & Co,. :328.
4. von Szilard L. Uber die Entropie ver minderung in einem thermodynamishen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen (1928) Mit 1 Abbildung (Eingegangen) am Jan 18. Reprinted in Behavioral Science (1964) 9(4) Oct.
5. All descriptions can be reduced to a one-dimensional sequence of symbols whose complexity is the information content of the shortest algorithm that completely describes it.6
6. Kolmogoroff A. Inform. Trans. (1965) 1:3.
7. The gravitational constant undergirds the sun's density; the latter in turn is the principal parameter behind its temperature and its emission. Conversely, the electric charge and Planck's constant underlie the molecular structure of water and, therefore its absorption.
