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.

The arrow of time is the object. The arrow of time does point both directions. While it is obvious that a broken egg won't spontaneously reassemble, other processes are happy either integrating or disintegrating. The arrow of time in the universe seems to point to increase of heat overall, while at the same time the universe expands even faster so there is an overall decrease of heat.

Perhaps a little geometrical picture will demonstrate. The arrow of time is running both directions all the time. We, living things, do indeed force the arrow to run in reverse within our regions of authority. We compose for a while and then we decompose. The arrow of time runs backwards while we live. Assuming life exists all aound the universe, it might be that this process will continue forever, and that it will eventually involve the entire universe if we can continue to grow into a Type 3 Civilization. We might already be a Type 3 Civilization but just a backwater outpost waiting to link up with the main effort. The arrow of time may already be running the opposite direction overall to what our little steam engine model indicates. There is nothing in the physical laws to contraindicate this.

Then one of us is misunderstanding the argument, Professor.

I'm sure that is true, yes.

I am completely unpersuaded of the applicability of information theory of any kind to practical problems in biological chemistry. The existence of a couple of funded scientists who are trying to prove there is such a role is not persuasive. But in any case, you cannot treat the nearly identical behavior of nearly identical cells as separate bits of information. How intricate cellular communication is in a complex multicellular organism is an open question. But certainly, it is many, many orders of magnitude less complex than treating each reaction in each cell as independent. Such a calculation smacks of the familiar 'improbability of myoglobin' calculations presented on numerous creationist web sites, which persuade non-neophytes of nothing except the author's naivety about probability calculations.

Are you (implicitly) suggesting that a person who thinks there are very good reasons why biology may well be irreducible to physics is expressing a “religious” view?

I'm saying that the people I know who do so are generally motivated by religion, and not by scientific evidence. (And also, if you want to avoid confusion with a YEC, stay away from the standard YEC bag of tricks:-)).

My opinion on the physicalist/non-physicalist debate is that it's premature; we know of no non-chaotic system that does not display determinist dynamics, and a philosophical distaste for determinism is not sufficient scientific grounds for rejecting the premise that biological systems are determinate. Moreover, we know enough of very simple living systems to expect that if they were not deterministic, we would have seen evidence of non-determinism. For example, we have mapped out not just the genome, but also the proteome , of some bacteria. If we know every gene; if we know every protein and RNA gene product; if we've determine all their 3D structures (and we're getting there); if we know their functions, and how they interact (ditto); and we have no evidence of any special fields or forces or anything that indicates that they behave other than by the evolution of physical/chemical laws; then I would say that we're in a pretty good position to discount vitalism at the level of a single cell.

But more importantly, I would say that you and AG are playing the age-old game of God-in-the-gaps. You're positing new entities, not because of a manifest inadequacy in established ones, but because you badly want those entities to exist, and you can identify niches where current experiment can't disprove them. That surely isn't scientific.

Okay, what stops G-d from acting in the gaps? An honest admission that there are gaps, that is too.

A hallmark of a good human designer of any sort is how smooth the design is -- say a design of clothing that fits, performs and styles so well it feels like an "organic" part of one's body. Why deny that possible aspect to all creation?

Such denial is a "Disney-esque" belief system ---meaning like a child's who visits the make-believe land of Disneyland or Disneyworld, accepting -- demanding -- that the make-believe is as fully real as are his parents. The folks at Disney -- the engineers, the designers, the technicians, the actors, the staff -- are each and every one keyed to maintaining that pleasant and joyfull delusion. Yet at Disney's palaces and playgrounds -- all is unreal!

You're positing new entities, not because of a manifest inadequacy in established ones, but because you badly want those entities to exist, and you can identify niches where current experiment can't disprove them. That surely isn't scientific.

You miss the point. Here is a little clue, (no sarcasm implied)....consider that gnostics and magi placed considerable import on the element of thinking.

Scriptural references to Egyptian courtisans casting their walking sticks on the ground and they became serpants, but they still were no match for the stick cast on the ground by a man of God, which snake consumed the others.

Consider Christ walking on water and Peter also for a bit.

Some allude that it is possible for faith to effect the physical world and not merely by influencing the soul, but by impact upon the physical.

Consider the nature of science. It first presumes a hypothesis, then tests it. If the gnostic had part of the story correct, physics in some part is influenced by thought. Just because many laws of physics do not allow some experiments to fruitfully acknowledge some aspects of hypothesis doensn't exclude the possibility that the thoughts of others haven't righteously prevailed.

BTW the gnostic view in incorrect, but not because of the attention to the craft, but because of its failure to abide by the will of God. This doesn't cast out all scientific work, rather it recognizes the scientific method, in and of itself, might beg the question of faith.

Public release date: 28-Feb-2005

http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/chemistry.php Contact: Octavi López Coronado
octavi.lopez@uab.es
34-93-581-3301
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

UAB scientists discover the origin of a mysterious physical force Discovery will led to improvements in the chemical, pharmaceutical and food industry

Ever since the 1970s, scientists have been trying to establish the cause of a repulsive force occurring between different electrostatically charged molecules, such as DNA and other biomolecules, when they are very close to each other in aqueous media. This force became know as hydration force.

Jordi Faraudo, a researcher for the Department of Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Fernando Bresme of the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London have studied this mysterious force in detail and have discovered where its origins lie.

In the same way that a flag flutters in the direction the wind is blowing, at a microscopic level water molecules are gently attracted towards the direction in which an electric field is pointing. However, when the water is in contact with surfaces that create small electric fields, such as chemical compounds like those found in many detergents, this is no longer the case: the water molecules have a remarkable capacity to organise themselves into complex structures that are strongly orientated in such a way as to cancel out the electric field, and on some occasions, to reverse it. This abnormal behaviour was discovered by the same researchers and published in Physical Review Letters in April 2004.

The scientists have now discovered that this strange property is responsible for the hydration force that acts when water is surrounded by certain types of electrostatically charged molecules, such as DNA and some biological compounds, and when thin films form in detergents. The discovery has been published in today's edition of Physical Review Letters.

Water is the solvent in which most physical, chemical and biological processes take place. Therefore, it is essential to understand the nature of interactions between molecules dissolved in water in order to understand many of these processes. Two of the most important of these processes are the adherence of substances to cell membranes and the withdrawal of proteins. Both of these are fundamental in biomedical research, since a substantial part of the process of designing new drugs is based on understanding how substances penetrate cell membranes to enter cells. These drugs are often proteins designed to prevent or strengthen the action of other substances. In these cases, accurately identifying the protein folding is essential, since the form these proteins take on when they fold influences how effectively they are able to act.

Fully understanding the properties of this force that occurs when molecules surrounded by water adhere to each other is also useful in the chemical industry, particularly when involving mechanisms in which colloidal suspensions must be stabilised, such as the mechanisms used to produce paints, cosmetics and food products such as yoghurt and mayonnaise.

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Moreover, we know enough of very simple living systems to expect that if they were not deterministic, we would have seen evidence of non-determinism. For example, we have mapped out not just the genome, but also the proteome , of some bacteria. If we know every gene; if we know every protein and RNA gene product; if we've determine all their 3D structures (and we're getting there); if we know their functions, and how they interact (ditto); and we have no evidence of any special fields or forces or anything that indicates that they behave other than by the evolution of physical/chemical laws; then I would say that we're in a pretty good position to discount vitalism at the level of a single cell.

I'd like to second that argument. Well said. The same argument also applies to attempts to invoke a "will field" (or whatever) hypothesis which incorporates even the survival mechanisms of single cells, since again the processes by which these mechanisms operate are (in most cases) well understood, and act in "mechanical" fashion by the ordinary rules of chemistry and so on.

Also, much more is already known of some bacteria than just the genome and proteome. For example, complete biochemical pathways are now known for most of the activities which take place within E. Coli bacteria. See for example:

Global Properties of the Metabolic Map of Escherichia coli
Abstract: The EcoCyc database characterizes the known network of Escherichia coli small-molecule metabolism. Here we present a computational analysis of the global properties of that network, which consists of 744 reactions that are catalyzed by 607 enzymes. The reactions are organized into 131 pathways. Of the metabolic enzymes, 100 are multifunctional, and 68 of the reactions are catalyzed by >1 enzyme. The network contains 791 chemical substrates.

Functional Versatility and Molecular Diversity of the Metabolic Map of Escherichia coli
The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
Abstract: The Escherichia coli MG1655 genome has been completely sequenced. The annotated sequence, biochemical information, and other information were used to reconstruct the E. coli metabolic map. The stoichiometric coefficients for each metabolic enzyme in the E. coli metabolic map were assembled to construct a genomespecific stoichiometric matrix. The E. coli stoichiometric matrix was used to define the system’s characteristics and the capabilities of E. coli metabolism. The effects of gene deletions in the central metabolic pathways on the ability of the in silico metabolic network to support growth were assessed, and the in silico predictions were compared with experimental observations. It was shown that based on stoichiometric and capacity constraints the in silico analysis was able to qualitatively predict the growth potential of mutant strains in 86% of the cases examined. Herein, it is demonstrated that the synthesis of in silico metabolic genotypes based on genomic, biochemical, and strain-specific information is possible, and that systems analysis methods are available to analyze and interpret the metabolic phenotype.
(Loose translation of the above: The E. Coli proteome and its expected protein and metabolic chain interactions can be "run" as a computer model (based on what is known of the way in which proteins interact), and already the model is at least 86% accurate in describing the actual biochemical reaction chains in living E. Coli and exactly how the bacteria will respond when various genes are deleted. This provides excellent support for RWP's point.)

There is an excellent overview of the metabolic map of E. Coli here. It includes the same image as the following, but in a form clickable on any node or pathway in order to view detailed information about the selected pathway, involved genes, regulation schematics, and more:

And this site has E. Coli metabolic maps displayed more in "poster form", for example (low-res form):

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