Creation/Evolution Quotes:
Origin of Life #3: Information Creation/Evolution Quotes:
Origin of Life #3: Information[Quotes main page] [Origin of life, #1, #2, #4, #5, #6]
"Evidently nature can no longer be seen as matter and energy alone. Nor can all her secrets be unlocked with the keys of chemistry and physics, brilliantly successful as these two branches of science have been in our century. A third component is needed for any explanation of the world that claims to be complete. To the powerful theories of chemistry and physics must be added a late arrival: a theory of information. Nature must be interpreted as matter, energy, and information." (Campbell, Jeremy C., [Journalist], "Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life," [1982], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1984, reprint, p.16).
[top of page]"Biological systems, like machines, have, therefore, functions and forms inexplicable by chemical and physical laws. The argument that the DNA molecule determines genetic processes in living systems does not indicate reducibility. A DNA molecule essentiality transmits information to a developing cell. Similarly, a book transmits information. But the transmission of the information cannot be represented in terms of chemical and physical principles. In other words, the operation of the book is not reducible to chemical terms. Since DNA operates by transmission of (genetic) information, its function cannot be described by chemical laws either. The life process is essentially the development of a fertilized cell, as the result of information imparted by DNA. Transmission of this information is nonchemical and nonphysical, and is the controlling factor in the life process. The description of a living system therefore transcends the chemical and physical laws which govern its constituents." (Polanyi, Michael [Hungarian chemist and philosopher], "Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry," Chemical & Engineering News, Vol. 45, No. 35, August 21, 1967, pp.54-66, p.56).
[top of page]"The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information. In accordance with this, the idea of biological information emerges as *the* fundamental concept in the physicochemical theory of the origin of life." (Kuppers, Bernd-Olaf. [researcher, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry], "Information and the Origin of Life," [1986], MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1990, p.170. Emphasis in original.).
[top of page]"Any living being possesses an enormous amount of "intelligence," very much more than is necessary to build the most magnificent of cathedrals. Today, this "intelligence" is called "information," but it is still the same thing. It is not programmed as in a computer, but rather it is condensed on a molecular scale in the chromosomal DNA or in that of any other organelle in each cell. This "intelligence" is the sine qua non of life. If absent, no living being is imaginable. Where does it come from? This is a problem which concerns both biologists and philosophers and, at present, science seems incapable of solving it." (Grasse, Pierre-P., [editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie," former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], "Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.2).
[top of page]"When we consider a human work, we believe we know where the `intelligence' which fashioned it comes from; but when a living being is concerned, no one knows or ever knew, neither Darwin nor Epicurus, neither Leibniz nor Aristotle, neither Einstein nor Parmenides. An act of faith is necessary to make us adopt one hypothesis rather than another. Science, which does not accept any credo, or in any case should not, acknowledges its ignorance, its inability to solve this problem which, we are certain, exists and has reality. If to determine the origin of information in a computer is not a false problem, why should the search for the information contained in cellular nuclei be one?" (Grasse, Pierre-P. [editor of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie," former Chair of Evolution, Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences], "Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.2).
[top of page]"Could the vast store of information necessary for the development of biology have been accumulated in only ten billion years? If you are inclined to think that it could, take a look at what we know of the most recent four billion years, and what many people believe to be the beginning of the Universe in a big-bang cosmology. Such a beginning occurs in a holocaust of radiation little suited to harboring the delicate organization of biology, while the past three to four billion years on the Earth have yielded no change in the intricate biochemical complexity of life. The enzymes go essentially unchanged from the cells of a human to the most primitive single cells, which are thought to be typical of life as it existed in the early days of the Earth. Hence we have a situation without a promising beginning and with no change of the crucial aspects of the life system over the last one third to one half of the ten billion year time interval. Where then did the miracle of information contained in biological systems arise?" (Hoyle, Fred [late mathematician, physicist and Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 20, 1982, pp.1-35, p.5).
[top of page]"Biological information is the most important information we can discover because over the next several decades it will revolutionize medicine and lead to treatments for most diseases. Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created." (Gates, Bill [Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corporation], "The Road Ahead," [1995], Penguin: London, Revised, 1996, p.228).
[Top of page]"The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems run down like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' faster and faster. Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something else. What is it?" (Pirsig, Robert M., "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals," Bantam: London, 1991, pp.144- 145).
[top of page]"In the face of the universal tendency for order to be lost, the complex organization of the living organism can be maintained only if work-involving the expenditure of energy- is performed to conserve the order. The organism is constantly adjusting, repairing, replacing, and this requires energy. But the preservation of the complex, improbable organization of the living creature needs more than energy for the work. It calls for information or instructions on how the energy should be expended to maintain the improbable organization. The idea of information necessary for the maintenance and, as we shall see, creation of living systems is of great utility in approaching the biological problems of reproduction." (Simpson, George Gaylord [Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University] & Beck, William S. [Harvard University], "Life: An Introduction to Biology," [1957], Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, Second Edition, 1965, p.145).
[top of page]"It is possible to make a more fundamental distinction between living and nonliving things by examining their molecular structure and molecular behavior. In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple, well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures which are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity." (Orgel, Leslie E. [Biochemist and Resident Fellow, Salk Institute for Biological Studies], "The Origins of Life: Molecules and Natural Selection," Chapman & Hall: London, 1973, p.189. Emphasis in original.).
[top of page]"We have repeatedly emphasized the fundamental problems posed for the biologist by the fact of life's complex organization. We have seen that organization requires work for its maintenance and that the universal quest for food is in part to provide the energy needed for this work. But the simple expenditure of energy is not sufficient to develop and maintain order. A bull in a china shop performs work, but he neither creates nor maintains organization. The work needed is particular work; it must follow specifications; it requires information on how to proceed. ... In showing that the organization of living matter is controlled by information in the chromosomes, genetics provides only the beginnings of a full explanation. We need to know not only where the information is and how it is decoded by the organism, but how it got there." (Simpson, George Gaylord [late Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University] & Beck, William S. [Harvard University] , "Life: An Introduction To Biology," [1957], Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, Second Edition, 1965, p.466. Emphasis in original).
[top of page]"`Organized' systems are to be carefully distinguished from `ordered' systems. Neither kind of system is `random'; but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an external`wiring diagram' with a high information content." (Wicken, Jeffrey S. [Professor of Biochemistry, Pennsylvania State University], "The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion," Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 77, April 1979, pp.349-365, p.353).
[Top of page]"I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago.'" (Clark R.W., "The Life of Ernst Chain [Nobel Prize for Physiology & Medicine, 1945]: Penicillin and Beyond," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1985, p.148).
[top of page]"The origin of the genetic code is the most baffling aspect of the problem of the origins of life and a major conceptual or experimental breakthrough may be needed before we can make any substantial progress." (Orgel, Leslie E. [Adjunct Professor, University of California-San Diego, Resident Fellow, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, California], "Darwinism at the very beginning of life," New Scientist, 15 April 1982, p.151) ).
[Top of page]"The origin of the [genetic] code is perhaps the most perplexing problem in evolutionary biology. The existing translational machinery is at the same time so complex, so universal) and so essential that it is hard to see how it could have come into existences or how life could have existed without it. The discovery of ribozymes has made it easier to imagine an answer to the second of these questions, but the transformation of an 'RNA world' into one in which catalysis is performed by proteins, and nucleic acids specialize in the transmission of information, remains a formidable problem." (Maynard Smith, John [Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex] & Szathmary, Eors [Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest, "The Major Transitions in Evolution," W.H. Freeman: Oxford UK, 1995, p.81 ).
[top of page]"Two points of principle are worth emphasis. The first is that the usually supposed logical inevitability of the theory of evolution by natural selection is quite incorrect. There is no inevitability, just the reverse. It is only when the present asexual model is changed to the sophisticated model of sexual reproduction accompanied by crossover that the theory can be made to work, even in the limited degree to be discussed .... This presents an insuperable problem for the notion that life arose out of an abiological organic soup through the development of a primitive replicating system. A primitive replicating system could not have copied itself with anything like the fidelity of present-day systems .... With only poor copying fidelity, a primitive system could carry little genetic information without L [the mutation rate] becoming unbearably large, and how a primitive system could then improve its fidelity and also evolve into a sexual system with crossover beggars the imagination." (Hoyle, Fred [late mathematician, physicist and Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University], "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p.20).
[Top of page]"The development of the metabolic system, which, as the primordial soup thinned, must have "learned" to mobilize chemical potential and to synthesize the cellular components, poses Herculean problems. So also does the emergence of the selectively permeable membrane without which there can be no viable cell. But the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its translation mechanism. Indeed, instead of a problem it ought rather to be called a riddle. The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation. It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine." (Monod, Jacques [biochemist, Nobel Prize 1965, Director, Pasteur Institute, France], "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", [1971], Transl. Wainhouse A., Penguin Books: London, 1997, reprint, pp.142-143. Emphasis in original).
[top of page]"A natural and fundamental question to ask, on learning of these incredibly intricately interlocking pieces of software and hardware is: "How did they ever get started in the first place?" It is truly a baffling thing. One has to imagine some sort of a bootstrap process occurring, somewhat like that which is used in the development of new computer languages-but a bootstrap from simple molecules to entire cells is almost beyond one's power to imagine. There are various theories on the origin of life. They all run aground on this most central of all central questions: "How did the Genetic Code, along with the mechanisms for its translation (ribosomes and tRNA molecules), originate?" For the moment, we will have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer." (Hofstadter, Douglas R., [mathematician and historian], "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid," [1979], Vintage: New York NY, 1980, reprint, p.548).
[top of page]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed to be creationists.
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