Can the Monist View Account for "What Is Life?"

In this article we would like to address the soundness and adequacy of the monist view of reality which conceives of “all that there is” as ultimately reducible to the concept of “matter in its motions.” This view holds that there is no essential difference between living and non-living systems in nature since both ultimately are expressions of the workings of the physical laws and only the physical laws. This insight or expectation leads one to presume that the laws of physics and chemistry are entirely sufficient to explain how matter came one day to spontaneously generate Life and thus all evolving living systems. This hypothesis is called abiogenesis and, try as hard as many first-rate researchers have done thus far, the fact is it has never yet been scientifically demonstrated.

Darwin studiously avoided abiogenesis in his major works — hence the insistence on the forum that the “theory of evolution” does not include abiogenesis. Perhaps his avoidance of the issue was for political reasons, we don’t know. At any rate, Darwin was known for his speculations about a “warm little pond” though evidently he didn’t want it to be a part of his theory. http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Abiogenesis.

And yet one readily gets the impression on following the forum debate that many, if not most, subscribers to Darwin’s theory suppose that abiogenesis did, in fact, occur in some far distant past. On this view, biological evolution takes its origin from an unvalidated event that is presumed to be wholly material in character. This materialist aspect is fully consonant with the Darwinian view; abiogenesis rounds out the cosmological view to include a “beginning,” the problem that Darwin sought to avoid.

Implicit in the monist theory is the expectation that the universe is causally closed. All causes are material causes, and what we see all around us is the present cumulative effect of a virtually infinite succession of random material events that have taken place from a virtually infinite past until now. Such causes arise only within the 3+1 dimensional “block” of space-time as we humans normally experience/conceive it.

Yet as Elitzur (1993) points out, “the most essential attribute of randomness is the absence of connection between the states of the system’s components.” Organization, by definition, means that the system’s parts are highly correlated. The converse of “organization” is “reducibility” or “separability.” Therefore, organization means non-separability, connectivity. A. Grandpierre points out that “biological organization is different from physical ordering that is accompanied by a decrease of entropy. While physical ordering (misleadingly called ‘self-organization,’ but its actual meaning is self-ordering) plays an important role in storing information, the dynamical process of government through information is a process with a quite different nature.”

And yet the monist view holds that “all that there is” is fundamentally reducible to material random events or accidents being fortuitously tamed or shaped by physical laws. Which is what you would expect if you think that only material, physical, tangible entities are real. And thus information processing in living systems is a subject that can never come up in the first place; for fundamentally it is an immaterial, intangible process.

And yet here’s the interesting situation that develops from the physicalist (i.e., monist) concept: The physical laws themselves are immaterial, non-physical, intangible entities. It is here that the monist view breaks down as a valid interpretation of nature on its own terms. You can’t at the same time say that physical matter is all that there is and then turn around and invoke an immaterial principle that conditions or determines material behavior without engaging in self-contradiction.

And what can we say about the physical laws themselves — the great laws of motion and thermodynamics? Assuming that they “tame matter” or cause it to behave in certain ways, and assuming that matter is more or less “dumb and blind” (and quite possibly “lazy!”), then the physical laws must possess an informative content. And there’s another very interesting thing about the physical laws: They are in the main all laws of conservation. It has been observed that the amount of information required for conservation of a system seems not to be high, at least in comparison with the amount of information needed for a system to organize itself, modify its behavior, develop, evolve. For matter, left to its own devices (e.g., blind, dumb, and lazy devices), will follow the principle of “least action.” To put this into perspective, Paul Davies (The Fifth Miracle, 1998) writes:

“The laws of physics … are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information. Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules … life cannot be ‘written into’ the laws of physics…. Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural.’ Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.”

For the above reasons, the present writers remain skeptical about claims issuing from the monist position with regard to the fundamental origin and nature of life in the Universe. There is a need to account for, not only the fact that life cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of what is “chemically and thermodynamically ‘natural’”; but even more importantly, that life seems to work to counter the outcomes predicted by the physical laws.

Of particular interest is the possible relation of entropy and information in living systems. By information we mean the successful communication of a message (or “informative text”) such as to cause a “reduction of uncertainty in the receiver,” as formulated in terms of Shannon information theory. Note that “reduction of uncertainty in the receiver” issues as an actual event by virtue of a “decision” made and thus is analogous to state vector collapse in quantum microsystems, and to realized intended outcomes of sentient beings in “real-world” macrosystems. In all three cases, it appears that the probability amplitude is collapsed into just one “choice,” and all other possibilities vanish into a netherworld of unrealized (at that moment at least) potentialities. In all three cases, we seem to be looking at instances of very frank “quantizations” of “the continuum.”

Thus the thought occurs to one: Perhaps it is the ubiquitous presence of “observers” making “informed” choices which constitutes the irreversible “arrow of time” of the second law of thermodynamics. For “observations” lead to events (decisions) which, in the 3+1D block, constitute a successive temporal sequence of newly produced causes or, more to the point, a history (which can be thought of as evolution in retrospect). And history — like memory — is an irreversible process.

Alternatively, in the Feynman/Everett multi-world models, history may be a sum of histories (the cat is both alive and dead). In the second case the apparent thermodynamic entropy on our particular worldline as observer (the phenomenon which suggests an arrow of time) — is only one selection — though for our worldline that path or arrow of time would likewise seem irreversible. Whether or not it is actually irreversible and whether the arrow of time itself points in one direction only depends on whether there is another temporal dimension (f-Theory, Vafa). We need to mention that we recognize the significance of other multi-world and extra temporal dimension models as competing cosmological views. A fuller treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of the present article.

Now it is controversial that thermodynamics can have anything at all to do with the propagation and transmission of information. Indeed, it is reasonable to draw the negative conclusion, provided that one’s thermodynamical model is the one espoused by Boltzmann, whose hypothesis was that the second law is a law of disorder, of chaos. That hypothesis alone would appear to make thermodynamics a problematical construct for systems that are complex and self-organizing, such as living systems seem to be. And yet living systems are ineluctibly microstates within the global macrostate so well described by the second law of thermodynamics. This problem has been well noted.

Yockey, for instance (in Information Theory and Molecular Biology, 1992), presented a mathematical proof that Shannon entropy and thermodynamic entropy are functions of probability spaces that are not isomorphic. From this mathematical fact, he draws the conclusion that these two entropies have “nothing whatever to do” with each other:

“The function for entropy in both classical statistical mechanics and the von Neumann entropy of quantum statistical mechanics has the dimensions of the Boltzmann constant k and has to do with energy and momentum, not information.”

But what if the sine qua non hallmark or signature of living organisms is that they work by converting thermodynamic entropy into Shannon entropy? This would mean that although the two entropies belong to non-isomorphic probability spaces, living organisms preeminently possess a mechanism to bring the two probability spaces into direct relations. Indeed, that may be the entire point about what it is that constitutes the difference between a living and non-living system.

This is the problem that Hungarian astrophysicist A. Grandpierre tackles straight on in a forthcoming work. It is perhaps surprising that an astrophysicist would veer into biology. It turns out that his researches into the nature of the Sun suggested that astral bodies are self-organizing systems that actively work against the setting up of thermodynamic equilibrium that would otherwise obtain given initial and boundary conditions. In other words, the Sun is not a “hot ball of gas.” And so the resemblance of the Sun’s observed behavior to anything that we normally perceive as “biological behavior” struck him as an interesting problem.

As for the criteria of “biological behavior” to be applied, Grandpierre primarily draws on Ervin Bauer, a Hungarian theoretical biologist and physicist active during the first part of the 20th century, largely under Soviet auspices. Bauer is little known today. (His work, Theoretical Biology [1935], was published only in German and Russian and, we gather, is out of print anyway.) But we think he will make a come-back. For as far as we know, it was Ervin Bauer who first drew thermodynamics into explicit connection with biological theory, and Grandpierre highly values his insights:

“Living organisms do not tend towards the physical equilibrium related to their initial and boundary conditions, but [at all times] act in order to preserve their distances from the deathly physical equilibrium” predicted by the second law.

This says that, unlike physical systems, living systems move in just the opposite direction from that predicted by the second law: that is, living systems, for as long as possible, are devoted to evading or forestalling the eventual total loss of potential energies for the task of productive work, and thus ultimately “heat death.” But if living systems can counter the second law, then one must ask, how do they do that?

Grandpierre notes that “entropy is a somewhat subtle concept just because it connects two fundamentally different realms, of which only one is usually termed as ‘reality.’ Entropy connects the realms of possibilities with the world of manifested phenomena. If one would guess that possibilities do not exist since they do not belong to the phenomenal world, this would be conceptually confusing at the proper understanding of physical world. The central role of entropy is one of the most fundamental laws of Nature; the second law of thermodynamics tells that possibilities do belong to reality — and determine the direction of development of physical systems.”

“[First we must] quantify some biologically fundamental aspects of entropy, information, order, and biological organization. Thermodynamic entropy, S and the entropic distance of the human body from its physical equilibrium at constant internal energy [must be] determined quantitatively, together with the number of microstates related to physical, chemical, and biological macrostates.

“We distinguish between physically and biologically possible states. In physical objects internal energy is redistributed by dissipative processes. In living organisms the Gibbs free energy, G is also redistributed, but not only in the individual degrees of freedom, but also by means of the consecutively coupling action of biological organization, which works on the whole set of all possible collective degrees of freedom.”

From the “here determined quantities [that] shed light on the source of biological information….our calculations show that the relatively high value of S [entropy] enhances the ability of living matter to represent information.”

And thus, by “determining the average information flow of a cell in the human body, and determining the enthalpy of a DNA molecule, we can draw quantitative consequences with regard to the static and dynamic information content of DNA. We estimated that the information necessary to govern the >105 chemical reactions sec^–1 cell^–1 in the 6*10¹³ human cells requires >10¹⁹ bits sec^–1 that cannot be supplied from the static sequential information content of DNA ~10⁹ bits for more than 10^–10 sec. Physical self-ordering and biological self-organization represent opposite yet complementary tendencies that together cooperate to serve optimal balance. All these results together show that the source of biological information is ultimately to be found in the Bauer principle, in the same manner as the source of physical information is to be found in the [least-]action principle of physics.”

Elsewhere Grandpierre refers to the Bauer principle as the “life principle.” This has been alternatively termed as the fecundity principle (Swenson), or “the will to live.” It is customary to regard DNA as the information source that drives living systems. But having estimated the gigantic information flow present in the human body, and comparing that with the static information content of DNA, Grandpierre realized that there is something like a 20-orders of magnitude deficit in DNA information as compared with this number. We point out that DNA is the same in every cell of the body; and yet different cells are undergoing all kinds of different reactions, are involving themselves in collective modes (formation of macromolecules, organs, etc.) constantly. Obviously, the relatively low information content of DNA cannot explain the huge variety of functions that are taking place in the human body at every instant of time. Another interesting fact is that an organism’s DNA is exactly the same in a living cell as it is in a dead one. Thus if anything, it appears that DNA primarily works at the level of “physically-possible systems” (which are those that are still operational after death occurs), and so does not appear to be the only or even the main factor in biological self-organization, self-maintenance, etc. In order to be effective in the governance of “biologically-possible systems,” DNA itself must have access to a dynamic information source in order to compensate for the deficit of its static information in terms of driving biological behaviors.

So, where does this dynamic information come from? We are usually criticized for introducing a “pink unicorn” at this stage of the argument, for we propose that biological information is carried by a universal field. And yet the existence of fields is uncontroversial in science. We know that there are particle fields, force fields (e.g., EM, gravitation fields), and the reality of vacuum field is also uncontroversial. The main point about a field is its universal extent. Being universal, it is not an “ordinary” object of 3+1D spacetime. Rather, fields constitute matrices in which events happen, ultimately unifying all world processes into one integrated whole.

Fields apply universally to all points in space/time — every where and every when — thus they are neither time-restricted nor spatial coordinate restricted.

Grandpierre argues that, in addition to the other fields identified by science, there is also a “biofield” or an organic zero-point vacuum field that is the carrier of biological information. An analogy might help to explicate the theory. The Internet is a “universal” information field that can be accessed by anyone who has the proper equipment. There are often cases when communications are sent to us over the Internet. DNA stands for the particular “address” at which we can be successfully contacted; DNA is “smart enough” to be a router for incoming information addressed specifically to a particular receiver. And its presence as a router is necessary; otherwise, information being addressed to us would have no efficient way to reach us and, thus, to do us any good.

One might speculate that the physical laws, being also universal in extent and application, may similarly be field-carried phenomena in this sense.

In any case, when we speak of a “netherworld of yet-unrealized possibilities” occasioned by a re-imagined second law, are we not speaking of potentially real things that have to reside somewhere, because they represent states of potentiality that may become actualized? If this “netherworld” is of universal extent, then it would need a field to carry it.

In the space of a short article, we can only briefly touch on the arguments advanced by Dr. Grandpierre and his associates. If you have an interest in looking at his research, the Journal of Theoretical Biology may soon publish an article of his (working title: “Thermodynamic Entropy and Biological Information”) which richly details the merest sketch of certain key points given above, and a wealth of others besides.

Thank you for your posts!

The information content is already in a Shannon system. It is already in any meaningful information system.

Indeed, it is called the "message" in the model. However, the value or meaning of the message is completely beside the point of the model which addresses only the successful communication of the message from sender to receiver.

BTW a week is seven days. Thats 2x3 plus one. The same structure as space and time.

Which space/time theory are you speaking of here?

That is just a restatement of your original assertion. It does not counter the observation that as an empirical fact, we act as agents and make choices. Stating that those choices are 'illusory' demands proof that they are in fact illusory.

But I would say it is impossible to have an objective standard of morality without God.

In what sense is Kant's 'act as if the rule you follow could become a universal maxim' non-objective?

DAWKINS: (snip)"…But yet we have this gathering together of genes into individual organisms. And that reminds me of the illusion of one mind, when actually there are lots of little mindlets in there, and the illusion of the soul of the white ant in the termite mound, where you have lots of little entities all pulling together to create an illusion of one. Am I right to think that the feeling that I have that I'm a single entity, who makes decisions, and loves and hates and has political views and things, that this is a kind of illusion that has come about because Darwinian selection found it expedient to create that illusion of unitariness rather than let us be a kind of society of mind?"
PINKER: "It's a very interesting question. Yes, there is a sense in which the whole brain has interests in common in the way that say a whole body composed of genes with their own selfish motives has a single agenda. In the case of the genes the fact that their fates all depend on the survival of the body forces them to cooperate. In the case of the different parts of the brain, the fact that the brain ultimately controls a body that has to be in one place at one time may impose the need for some kind of circuit, presumably in the frontal lobes, that coordinates the different agendas of the different parts of the brain to ensure that the whole body goes in one direction. In How the Mind Works I alluded to a scene in the comedy movie All of Me in which Lily Tomlin's soul inhabits the left half of Steve Martin's body and he takes a few steps in one direction under his own control and then lurches in another direction with his pinkie extended while under the control of Lily Tomlin's spirit. That is what would happen if you had nothing but completely autonomous modules of the brain, each with its own goal. Since the body has to be in one place at one time, there might be a circuit that suppresses the conflicting motives…"(end snip)

The loss (illusion) of ‘self’ (ego)… to ‘selfish’ (DNA)…, they assume ‘selfish’ (anthropomorphizing) mindless mechanisms have created the mind that they now use to ponder the mind. So ‘my’ problem is the mindless mechanistic assumption. (but you should know that by now)

But if I were to try to find something to agree with, I can only say that I am a Steve Martin fan.

Thank you for your reply!

In what sense is Kant's 'act as if the rule you follow could become a universal maxim' non-objective?

See above emphasis.

It does not counter the observation that as an empirical fact, we act as agents and make choices. Stating that those choices are 'illusory' demands proof that they are in fact illusory.

Pinker declares them illusory when he says the mind is an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. The "choice" was an action of your physical brain, your mind was merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain working.

This is why Pinker's worldview is considered strong determinism.

In what sense is Kant's 'act as if the rule you follow could become a universal maxim' non-objective?

I'll see your second person singular and raise you As you would that men would do to you , do also to them in like manner.

I could have phrased the categorical imperative as follows:

Everyone should act at all times as if the rule they follow could become a universal maxim

And of course we could write the Golden Rule in similarly impersonal terms. Doing so makes neither more or less objective.

The "choice" was an action of your physical brain, your mind was merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain working

You still haven't said why an action that is the result of deterministic laws cannot be a choice. Is the color red illusory, simply because it's a result merely of our visual physiology? We write programs with decision forks all the time. Those programs gather data and make choices.

Well, first of all, read The Selfish Gene. Dawkins makes it clear he was using 'selfish' as a metaphor. He wasn't anthropomorphizing. You may not like him, but don't underestimate him.

Pinker would no doubt reply that seeing themselves as volitional agents was very important to the survival of your ancestors, and so of course you have a revulsion towards ideas you perceive as fatalistic. The ones that were inclined to say 'que sera, sera' got eaten.

Thank you for your reply!

I'll see your second person singular and raise you As you would that men would do to you , do also to them in like manner. I could have phrased the categorical imperative as follows: Everyone should act at all times as if the rule they follow could become a universal maxim

And of course we could write the Golden Rule in similarly impersonal terms. Doing so makes neither more or less objective.

That would be a great point, were loving our neighbor the Great Commandment. It is not, it comes second:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. - Matt 22:38-40

IOW, we are to love God absolutely. That comes first. That is the objectivity - His will determines what is right and what is not.

Then, secondly, we are to love our neighbors unconditionally. All of the laws and the prophets "hang" on these two commandments.

Skipping to the Golden Rule misses the absolute right v absolute wrong - objective morality.

You still haven't said why an action that is the result of deterministic laws cannot be a choice. Is the color red illusory, simply because it's a result merely of our visual physiology? We write programs with decision forks all the time. Those programs gather data and make choices.

There is no "you" to make a choice. It is the program doing the chosing - or more accurately, the designer of the program.

As you would that men would do to you , do also to them in like manner. I could have phrased the categorical imperative as follows: Everyone should act at all times as if the rule they follow could become a universal maxim

Hi guys! Kant's "categorical imperative" goes thusly: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." (As I recall.)

No way at all is this consistent with the Christian basis of morality, which as Alamo-Girl points out is first to love God with all one's heart and soul and mind and strength; and then only secondarily, "love thy neighbor as thyself."

These are God's commands; there's not a scintilla of the idea that human will can be the criterion of a moral system. And that is exactly the point: For a man to live in a manner fully consonant with the dignity of his created nature, he must follow God's laws, not his own.

In other words, Jesus tells us to take up His "yoke," by which we bind ourselves to God and, through God, to our fellow men. "For My yoke is easy, My burden is light." The right order of human liberty, personal and social, is secured by the humility of loving and honoring God, and following His laws.

Human will has nothing to do with it at all.

I'm sorry, but as a recovering behaviorist, I have to say the mind is a thing, in the same sense as a water molecule is a thing, though made of atoms, quarks, strings, etc. Minds can be said to make decisions even though embodied. Objects can be "nothing but their components" and have emergent properties at the same time.

Thank you for your posts!

The golden rule and its variations work because the trust of others is necessary for the enjoyment of our own lives. Even BTK knows that (99.9% of the time).

It may “work” but it is not Truth, Good or absolute Right. It is a negotiated agreement among the parties and the agreement is subject to change over time.

Altruism is as essential to the psychology of mammals as breathing is to our physiology. Mammals can't exist without altruistic mothers, and like breasts, males (most of them) have vestiges of altruism.

But Pinker would insist that “altruism” is an epiphenomenon of the physical breasts. BTW, isn’t it interesting that human babies do not have the initial abilities of animals to crawl to a breast, or stand to a breast?

But elsewhere you were strongly suggesting that the whole can never be more than the sum of its parts, wrt a definition of life v non-life/death in nature.

Can you give me one reason to love God if God is not good, and can you tell me how to determine what is good independently of it's being defined by God? If your goal is to be objective, let me know how you objectively determine what is good. God is a player in this too. If goodness doesn't exist independently of God, you are just sucking up to power.

To the contrary, God is Good, He is Love, He is Light and He is Truth. He is all of these things. They do not exist apart from him – they are among His properties.

It is not a matter of “sucking up to power” – the purpose of our existence is to be in Him and He in us. Those of us with “ears to hear” are going home. Everything else will be consumed in “heat death” and there will be a new beginning in which we have a part as family, and as rulers and priests. (Revelation, John 15, Col 3:3, etc.)

No way at all is this consistent with the Christian basis of morality, which as Alamo-Girl points out is first to love God with all one's heart and soul and mind and strength; and then only secondarily, "love thy neighbor as thyself."

I wasn't claiming that. I was claiming it formed an objective basis for morality.

The Prussian government, BTW, agreed with you, and censured Kant for his chutzpah in coming up with a reason to do good that didn't involve God.

Kant, BTW, was a pious man, who also derived a logical basis for believing in God.

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