Paul Davies: Information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, January 14, 2013, 15:47 (4332 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: An excellent article in today's Guardian by one of David's favourite writers, Paul Davies. By the way, he is an agnostic.-> 
> Sorry about the copied-and-pasted mess! Thanks to my technical incompetence, I can't get a direct link, but if you google Guardian 14 January Paul Davies, as I did, you will get the above, and then it's easy.-Always happy to help:-"Most research into life's murky origin has been carried out by chemists. They've tried a variety of approaches in their attempts to recreate the first steps on the road to life, but little progress has been made. Perhaps that is no surprise, given life's stupendous complexity. Even the simplest bacterium is incomparably more complicated than any chemical brew ever studied."-"The way life manages information involves a logical structure that differs fundamentally from mere complex chemistry. Therefore chemistry alone will not explain life's origin, any more than a study of silicon, copper and plastic will explain how a computer can execute a program. Our work suggests that the answer will come from taking information seriously as a physical agency, with its own dynamics and causal relationships existing alongside those of the matter that embodies it ... and that life's origin can ultimately be explained by importing the language and concepts of biology into physics and chemistry, rather than the other way round."-http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/secret-life-unveiled-chemistry-lab?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fcommentisfree%2Frss+(Comment+is+free)-Davies, the agnostic, admits information came first. Tony, take note! That is as much as admitting there has to be a super intelligence first. Thank you dhw. Wonderful article