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

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 30, 2020, 22:44 (1514 days ago) @ David Turell

This is a book review of Davies new book about how information affects evolution and life:

https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-in-revolution

"If the connection between What Is Life? and the central dogma is direct because it is historical, the central dogma is now known to be incorrect. Much of the evidence in favor of the demotion of the central dogma is brilliantly expounded by Paul Davies in The Demon in the Machine. Schrödinger brought crystallography to bear on the puzzles of stability and heredity; Davies brings information theory to bear on the same puzzles. In doing so, he joins the distinguished company of physical scientists who have contributed to fundamental biology.

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"In discussing cell division, he points out that the genome is entirely passive. It is the cell that does the dividing. DNA is as much acted upon as acting. If so, the conventional framework of biological theory is misleading. “What is still a mystery,” Davies writes,
is the biological equivalent of the supervisory unit that determines when instructions need to switch to become passive data. There is no obvious component in a cell, no special organelle that serves as “the strategic planner” to tell the cell how to regard DNA (as software or hardware) moment by moment. The decision to replicate … is not localized in one place.

"The book’s frequent references to top-down causation are welcome. In 2011, George Ellis organized an important meeting that brought this topic to the fore. At the meeting, I argued that there is no privileged level of causation in biology. This has been clearly shown in the mathematical modeling of biological networks. I have been arguing for this principle ever since. Davies, it is satisfactory to recount, expresses the same idea, but by a different metaphor.

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"Maxwell’s demon appeared to reverse the laws of thermodynamics.

"Davies shows that organisms have such molecular demons working away throughout the body. They can do this, of course, because they are open systems, continually exchanging matter and energy with their environment. Any energy used by the molecular demons comes from the environment with which living systems are in communion. Darwin saw this very clearly as well. “In my opinion,” he wrote in 1876, “the greatest error which I have committed, has not been allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e. food, climate, etc., independently of natural selection.”

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"Cells can detect serious danger and effectively change the arrangement or composition of their DNA. These processes are in some way guided because without such guidance, they could not produce the desired result.

"A word is needed for this. Fortunately, one is on hand, which has been in use since the time of Aristotle. It is teleology. The process is rather like shuffling a pack of cards. By chance, many different new arrangements will occur. The operative unit—whether a multicellular organism or a single-cell organism—then selects the arrangement best suited to cope with the environmental challenge...These arguments serve to weaken the common neo-Darwinian assumption that evolution is completely blind, and they suggest, if they do not imply, that life is not simply an unlikely occurrence in a universe without purpose.

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"The actual error rate when DNA is being copied is around 1 in 104 bases—a figure a million times higher than previously assumed. Davies describes a process in which proofreading demons come in to diligently compare one strand of copied DNA with the other to discover where the errors occur, and then to correct them. Imagine a proofreader receiving a book draft with so many errors. It would amount to an error on almost every page. At 100 pages per book, the demons would clean up all the errors in 10,000 such books. No human proofreader could be that accurate. Imagine now that the organism can selectively vary the error-correction rate.

"Davies: "While it is the case that biological information is instantiated in matter, it is not inherent in matter. Bits of information chart their own course inside living things. In so doing, they don’t violate the laws of physics, but nor are they encapsulated by those laws: it is impossible to derive the laws of information from the known laws of physics."

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"Like the rest of the book, Davies’s epilogue touches on deep questions about ourselves and the universe. One of these is whether life was inevitable.

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"The view that the universe is ruled by just blind chance, flies in the face of all that we experience as sentient, creative, and intentional beings. To believe this, we have to swallow the view that evolution, in creating the human nervous system, endowed it with an extraordinarily powerful illusion that forces us to act as though we have purpose, while really we only reflect the blind determination of our genes and other molecules."(my bold)

Comment: The bold is exactly my point. Our arrival is highly significant. This discussion mirrors the comments of Stephen Talbott. Information must be used but how so is still hidden from us. Where did all that definitive and necessary information come from? Smells of God for me but they carefully try to stay away.