Information as the source of life; Davies opinion (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, January 25, 2019, 20:56 (2128 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Friday, January 25, 2019, 21:04

In a new book Paul Davies points to information as the likely underpinning of life:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00215-9?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_c...

"Paul Davies. His latest book, The Demon in the Machine, presents a case that information is central not just to doing biology, but to understanding life itself.

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"Davies claims that life’s defining characteristics are better understood in terms of information. This is not as absurd as it may seem. Energy is abstract, yet we have little trouble accepting it as a causal factor. Indeed, energy and information are closely related through entropy.

Davies explains this connection by referring to Maxwell’s demon. Victorian physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s celebrated thought experiment features a hypothetical miniature beast perching at an aperture between two containers of gas, where it allows only certain molecules to pass, depending on their kinetic energy. The demon can thus create a temperature gradient between the containers: a reduction in overall entropy, apparently breaking the second law of thermodynamics. The resolution to this paradox seems to lie in the fact that the demon must gather information about the properties of each molecule, and for this it requires a recording device, such as a brain or a miniature notebook. When its storage space eventually runs out, the information must be deleted, a process that necessarily produces an increase in total entropy.

From this perspective, living systems can be seen as composed of countless such ‘demons’ (proteins and other cellular machinery) that maintain local order by pumping disorder (often in the form of heat) into their surroundings. Davies adroitly brings Schrödinger’s account up to date by way of Claude Shannon’s information theory, Turing machines (universal computers), von Neumann machines (self-replicating universal constructors), molecular biology, epigenetics, information-integration theories of consciousness and quantum biology (which concerns quantum effects in processes from photosynthesis to insect coloration and bird navigation).

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"Davies adroitly brings Schrödinger’s account up to date by way of Claude Shannon’s information theory, Turing machines (universal computers), von Neumann machines (self-replicating universal constructors), molecular biology, epigenetics, information-integration theories of consciousness and quantum biology (which concerns quantum effects in processes from photosynthesis to insect coloration and bird navigation).

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"a definition of life that depends on its informational characteristics rather than its carbon-based substrate could force a reappraisal of our attitudes towards artificial systems embodied in computers. We are already beginning to treat these as companions; might we eventually come to see them as living creatures rather than mere imitations?

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"As well as having eclectic interests, Davies is iconoclastic and opinionated. Although certainly no believer in a vital force distinct from physics or chemistry, he has little time for reductionism, believing that life cannot be fully explained in terms of lower-level laws (such as the second law of thermodynamics), even in principle. In a final nod to Schrödinger — who believed that a proper understanding of life might reveal “other laws of physics hitherto unknown” — Davies closes by arguing that biology might yet contain deep lessons for physics."

Comment: Information is either descriptive or provide instructions for functions. ID has always pointed to the latter as very important. Davies is joining in.