Just for openers, let me observe that many biologists today evidently think that describing living entities as “machines,” or as exhibiting “machine-like” behavior, somehow restricts the entities to purely naturalistic causes. The irony here is that there is no example of a “machine” that human beings can point to that does not imply the prior existence of a designer or builder who planned and built the machine — with a purpose in mind for it. Without that purpose, the machine would not have been built in the first place.
Back to Polanyi’s statement above. For the immediately stated reason, it should be obvious that a “machine” which is living cannot be reduced to the laws of physics and chemistry. For if it’s a “machine,” (1) it must be in some fashion a “design,” implying a designer; (2) and it must be purposeful — that is, it is intended toward securing a specified goal or function. [Of course, Darwin denies goal-direction, indeed, any purpose to evolution; for that which is “random” (in the limit of natural selection) cannot be, at the same time, “purposeful.”]
On my view, Polanyi is certainly right: Living organisms cannot be explained or “reduced” to the physics and chemistry of the matter of which they consist as physical bodies. There’s more to life than “matter” in any case. And that more consists of information — which as far as we know is not “naturalistic” in origin.
As Alex Williams writes, “Most origin-of-life researchers agree (at least in the more revealing parts of their writings [he cites Nobel prize-winning biologist Christian de Duve here, 2005]) that there is no naturalistic experimental evidence directly demonstrating a pathway from non-life to life. They continue their research, however, believing that it is just a matter of time before we discover that pathway.”
To find that “pathway,” it seems obvious to me that one must discover the cause that can translate inert, inorganic matter into "living," or "animate" matter. And so we are speaking of the fundamental requirements that would allow abiogenesis to take place.
To me, the single greatest challenge to origin-of-life researchers dedicated to the hypothesis of abiogenesis is to identify and characterize the “threshold” at which matter “finds a way” to postpone the action of the second law of thermodynamics. Non-living matter in all its combinations is inexorably subject to this law. Living beings, on the other hand, obviously have “strategies” for evading it, at least for a time (i.e., the time in which they are living. When they’re dead, the law reasserts itself).
Certainly the process which Williams designates “autopoiesis” is not only a universal phenomenon common to all living beings, but it is essentially involved with “holding the second law at bay.”
Autopoiesis as defined by Williams has a five-manifold hierarchical structure:
(i) components with perfectly pure composition [i.e., material elements]Each of the hierarchical levels specifies the unique information pertaining to it. For instance, at levels (i) and (ii), it seems that the physical laws by themselves can explain what’s going on. The interesting thing here, however, is that the “algorithmic complexity” of the physical laws (based on Chaitin’s calculations) is about 1000 — 103bits. Considered as a measure of information, 1000 bits doesn’t get you very far; i.e., it doesn’t “explain” very much about the evidently “irreducible” complexity of biological entities. For instance, the algorithmic complexity of the human brain has been calculated (Grandpierre, 2008) as ~109 bits. Accordingly, there are six orders of magnitude difference between the “complexity” of the physical laws and the “complexity” of the human brain. I do not believe that the materialist supposition of science has any way to address, let alone solve, this extraordinary disparity.
(ii) components with highly specific structure [i.e., material elements combined in such a way that they may serve as “sub-components” of the biological “machine”]
(iii) components that are functionally integrated [i.e., the relation of the various subcomponents to one another in ways capable of serving a biological purpose]
(iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes [i.e., which “tell” the subcomponents “how” they are to work together to serve a biological purpose]
(v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival [i.e., the biological purpose itself — be it metabolism, cell repair, reproduction, “the maintenance of distance from entropy,” etc., etc.]
It’s at level (iii) where biological life begins to announce its possibility. With (iv) and (v), we know we’re “looking at it,” first in prospect (iv), and then in full actualization (v).
Williams is right to say, it seems to me, that no “lower” level of the hierarchy can exhaustively explain the properties of the next level “above” it — singly or in any combination of levels lower than the “target” level we wish to examine. That is to say, level (v) really cannot be exhaustively explained by levels (i) to (iv).
But level (5) expresses the way biological beings of all descriptions actually behave. That is, they don’t behave like “matter, obeying the physical laws.”
Well, I’ll wrap up for now. Though certainly we have only “scratched the surface” of the problem that Williams proposes here….
Thank you for posting this EXCELLENT, thought-provoking article, GGG!
What Betty Boop said and how! Did I mention you should write another book, Betty Boop? You never cease to amaze! And you are most welcome...I figured William’s argument would be right up your alley. To God be the glory!
All the best—GGG
There are times that certain laws or principles, can override others. Gravitation is certainly well established for our frame of reference, and yet there are things that temporarily over ride it; those being aerodynamics and buoyancy.
It appears that the laws of gravitation are no longer in effect and yet that is untrue.
The same with the 2nd law. Something in living systems is temporarily, and only slightly successfully, overriding it. I say slightly successfully because obvious deterioration begins to set in after a couple decades and seems to progress logarithmically after that. :(
I'm reading that as also asserting that while life must be designed, there can be no design that permits the organism to evolve.