[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply! But, er, nobody is resorting to magic to explain the "unphysical" aspects of life v non-life/death in nature.

me: I very strongly agree with Swenson that more than physical processes are necessary to explain the emergence and evolution of the biosphere

you: Sadly for you and Swenson, lab experiments have shown that basic physical processes are quite up to the task. No magic needed.

If there are lab experiments to explain the emergence and evolution of information, autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence - then by all means, please list them here! There are a lot of mathematicians and physicists wasting their time if the answer has been discovered in the lab.

Yes. As to "information:" It's stunningly obvious, and I'm always amazed that people choose to ignore the obvious physical nature of it. A very short gene sequences adds another term, via replication error or whatever; the mere addition of another gene is more information, just as adding one letter at random to a word is more information. Whether that information is useful or not is something the environment will determine, based on its effects on the gene sequence/organism as a whole. If it's a net positive, it stays. If a negative, it dies. Just that simple. Increased genes = increased information.

Information is not the message (DNA/RNA) but the successful communication of it. More specifically, information is defined as "the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state".

[orionblamblam]

> If there are lab experiments to explain the emergence and evolution of information

Look up the Miller experiments, which demonstrated the production of amino acids from much simpler chemicals, and the follow-up experiemnts by Fox which demonstrated simple physical principles turning those amino acids into proteinoid-based protolife indistinguishable for the oldest microfossils.

> Information is not the message (DNA/RNA)

ERRRR. DNA is self-replicating. DNA is thus both message and messenger.

> autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence

You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.