Your carving of the distinction between discrete and continuous states is reminiscent of Luis Rocha’s point that, for RNA molecules to be information carriers in abiogenesis hypotheses, it would require a separation between the two functions of RNA – on the one hand, non-reactive to carry information (content) and the other, reactive to perform the catalytic function. That expresses my primary objection to autonomy by natural causation and will no doubt be a key point when we resume the abiogenesis analysis. IOW, to me, Rocha's description is akin to a “finite state machine” which would point to either the Fecundity Principle generally ("will to live") or to Intelligent Design specifically. (betty boop, this may be another “pixel” in our investigation.)
IOW, we ought to question if there is an apparent asymmetry between the aggression towards life and the second law of thermodynamics – much like there is an asymmetry between matter and anti-matter. If there is, it might point to an inter-dimensional field (and be another pixel of evidence).
As an example, there exists a theory that gravity is such a small field in comparison to the others because it is inter-dimensional. Positive gravity to us as observers from our selection of 4 dimensions is an indent in space/time; conversely, negative gravity is an outdent in space/time. An object must achieve escape velocity to leave an indentation of space/time (positive gravity); conversely, an outdent would accelerate the expansion of the universe itself.
If we determine an asymmetry between the will to live and the second law of thermodynamics in the general "system", it may suggest another inter-dimensional field (like gravity) which only seems to be an asymmetry to us as observers because of the four dimension limitation of our vision and minds. If that were the case, the only way we would be able to describe it is through mathematics.
BTW, as a Platonist wrt mathematics, I would suggest that the math (geometry) exists and we only need to discover it - or perhaps, properly label what has already been discovered with regard to mirror symmetry and Calabi-Yau manifolds.
The fecundity principle is a scientific inquiry – but much like Darwin’s theory – it deals with origins and thus may provoke bias in both the contributors here and in the Lurkers. One who is a Buddhist might be convinced it supports his faith, while we Judeo/Christian believers might be convinced it supports our faith – much like an atheist might be convinced evolution supports his lack of faith. But all such condemnations are not just. We know evolutionists who are Christians and atheists who see a guiding hand in the form of cosmic ancestry.
I assert that prejudice in an inquiry is wrong across the board – Darwin’s theory is not theology neither is the Fecundity Principle. If an aggressive will to live exists in the “system” then it should be noted. The characterization of it is unavoidable, but ought to be labeled as such – which is asking no more of the evolutionists here who also atheistic - than they have asked of us over the years.
You are correct to say that Shannon Information requires a "choice" -- I usually say "selection" in what I have posted, no difference -- but there is nothing passive about viewing Shannon Information as stateful. Without recognizing state we will end up with the circular "chicken and egg" debate in which it becomes theoretically possible to argue that there can be no biological information without biological information. At some point in time the discrete state of random probability in a selection of nucleotide sequences, probably in RNA, precedes the continuous state of biological information where selected sequences are communicated.
Well I suppose it is always “theoretically possible to argue that there is no biological information without biological information”; but why bother agonizing over a tautology? You speak of “the discrete state of random probability in a selection of nucleotide sequences, probably in RNA, [that] precedes the continuous state of biological information where selected sequences are communicated.” I’m not sure I follow you here. It seems to me that “state” is the context in which the selection is made, thus it precedes the selection. But the main point seems to be not the condition of state, but the selection. For inanimate systems, the condition of state seems to determine all. But this does not seem to hold with biological systems; and the difference, I imagine, consists in the very idea of “choice.” The reduction of uncertainty in the receiver is what seemingly “guides” the choice, the selection. Which leads to an even more interesting question: What is the sender, which, on the Shannon model adapted to our purpose here, is the transmitter or broadcaster of the biological information? It seems that information is extraneous to any configuration of “state.”
[As an aside, a friend of mine is reasearching such matters. He tells me that DNA is far too “information poor” to be the source of biological information. He lays out his case most persuasively.]
Which brings us to the next consideration you raise, the seeming conflict between thermodynamic entropy and evolution. You suggest that I raised the “evolution of the population of one” model as a means of overcoming or obviating this seeming conflict, or to promulgate some “Gaia theory.” (Argghh!) Actually I didn’t mean to do either, for in the first place I don’t see any such conflict; and in the second, Gaia theory pertains to the system of the Earth (and seems to endue the Earth with qualities that cannot be demonstrated or falsified) – a subsystem of the total system we call Universe. What I was trying to do was to come up with a large enough context – the universal context, in fact -- in which these two seemingly mutually-exclusive principles – entropy and evolution -- could be reconciled. And it seems to make eminent sense to do that; for if we want to speak about abiogenesis or the evolution of species, then we ought to recognize that the emergence of life and all of biological evolution is entirely contingent upon the evolution or “history” of the universe as a whole – the sina qua non “population of one.”
Another key point I think we need to notice is that the physical laws that we know of are all universal laws. That is, they have application everywhere, in all processes of the Universe. Thus in the final analysis, they point to the unity of one system, one Universe -- a “population of one” at the ultimate level. [I’d love to delve into this issue in greater depth here; but for now I’ll just lay my marker down, in case anyone wants to come back to it later.]
Let’s consider the apparent conflict obtaining between entropy and evolution.
I was surprised to read recently that Newton’s second law has undergone an evolution of understanding over time. It seems his own great contemporary, Leibnitz, didn’t fully grasp the import of the two great laws. As Rod Swenson writes, “is was Leibnitz who first argued that there must be something which must be conserved (later [Newton’s] first law) and something which changes (later the second law).” Which just goes to show you: great thinkers often have great difficulty being understood by the other leading thinkers of their own time. (Liebnitz’s arguments with Newton are legendary.) And that later thinkers will come along and reinterpret the original theories, as arguably Boltzmann does with the second law.
The Boltzmannian view, which took hold in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, interpreted the second law as a law of “disorder” (penetrable only by means of stochastic analysis and thus fervid attention to given configurations of state) -- the physical word was not just assumed to be passive or “dead,” but constantly working to destroy order. It is readily apparent that such a view is inherently hostile to the idea of biological evolution.
In other words, on the Boltzmannian view one readily sees a conflict between entropy and evolution. And yet both seem ever to have been mutually cooperative in the evolving world, judging from the physical and historical record we now have. So perhaps Boltzmann had shrunk his vision too much….
In order to reesstablish a more suitable vista, let me quote Rod Swenson:
The first and second laws of thermodynamics are not ordinary laws of physics. Because the first law, the law of energy conservation, in effect, unifies all real-world processes, it is thus a law on which all other laws depend. In more technical terms, it expresses the time-translation symmetry of the laws of physics themselves. With respect to the second law, Eddington (1929) has argued that it holds the supreme position among all the laws of nature because it not only governs the ordinary laws of physics but the first law as well. If the first law expresses the underlying symmetry principle of the natural world (that which remains the same) the second law expresses the broken symmetry (that which changes). It is within the second law that a basic nomological understanding of end-directedness, and time itself, the ordinary experience of then and now, of the flow of things, came into the world. The search for a conserved quantity and active principle is found as early as the work of Thales and the Milesian physicists (c. 630-524 B.C.) and is thus co-existent with the beginnings of recorded science, although it is Heraclitus (c. 536 B.C.) with his insistence on the relation between persistence and change who could well be argued to hold the top position among the earliest progenitors of the field that would become thermodynamics.”
It seems our “modern problems” have very ancient roots. [Indeed, that was the main point of the article at the top of this thread.]
Heraclitus – the “long shadow” trailing behind Plato -- was particularly struck by the problem of the persistence of things that are subject to constant change, such as a flame or a river, not to mention a human being – he of the famous sayings “you cannot step twice into the same river,” “the most beautiful cosmos is like a garbage heap strewn at random,” “from all is One, and from One is all,” “the invisible harmony is better than the invisible,” “immortals – mortals, mortals – immortals, they lives each other’s death and die each other’s life.” (So OK, he was a puzzling sort of guy. :^) But I “get it.”)
All of which is not to say that Boltzmann was a moron: On the contrary, it was his particular genius to specify the thermodynamic behavior of “classical” gasses in closed systems, par excellence. Humanity owes him an eternal debt of honor and gratitude for his amazing contribution to the progress of science, IMHO. What we do want to say is that such a model does not pertain to living systems, for they are open systems. Thus we need a better model to explain how thermodynamic entropy can be harnessed to the purposes of biological systems. Swenson puts the problem this way:
Active, end-directive behavior was introduced nomologically into the world with the second law, but it did not at all seem to be the right kind for biology and psychology. Particularly with Boltzmann’s interpretation … the end-directedness of the second law [i.e., towards entropic equilibrium, in which the increase and spread of entropy predicted by the “closed-system” model of the second law culminates in thermodynamic equilibrium, defined as the state in which all energetic potential in the universe is expunged by means of “heat death” precluding all further development, or evolution] seemed to run completely opposite the active end-directedness manifested by living things which, given the fecundity principle are in the order-production business.”
So, how can thermodynamic entropy be understood to serve “the order-production business,” since heat death is its very opposite?
Schroedinger pointed out, as Swenson notes, that “as long as living things like flames (and all autocatakinetic systems [e.g., “self-organizing systems” such as tornadoes, dust devils, hurricanes, human cultural systems, not to mention us human beings, et al.]) produce entropy (or minimize potentials) at a sufficient rate to compensate for their own internal ordering (their ordered persistence away from equilibrium) then the balance equation of the second law would not be violated. Living things, on this view, are ‘permitted’ to exist … as long as they ‘paid their entropy debt.’”
And so it seems we ought to analyze what is an “autocatakinetic system.” The word is formed from auto]- “self” plus cata- “down,” plus kinetic, “of the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith” from kinein, “to cause to move.”
I gather we can translate “autocatakinetic system.” as “self-organizing system.” Bernard’s famous experiment shows us the way the second law can support such.
Bernard begins with the premise that the second law dominates nature. He proposed an experiment consisting of
a viscous liquid held in a circular dish between a uniform heat source below and a cooler temperature of the air above [i.e., the thermodynamic “sink”]. The difference in temperature constitutes a potential (or thermodynamic force F) the magnitude of which is determined by the extent of the difference.” Bernard found that “when F is below a critical threshold the system is in the disordered or linear ‘Boltzmann regime,” and a flow of heat is produced from source to sink (entropy is produced) as a result of the disordered collisions of the molecules (conduction) and the macroscopic state appears smooth and homogenous. When F is increased beyond a critical threshold, however, the symmetry of the disordered regime is broken and order spontaneously emerges as hundreds of millions of molecules begin moving collectively together.” [I.e., molecular “stuff” is starting to “move together” as an ensemble…. Boltzmann’s view, needless to say, does not anticipate nor can explain such a happenstance.]
Still it may justly be argued (IMO) that a “self-organizing system” need not be a living system. Whatever, Newton’s second law is “king” in all its manifestations and “grades.” Yet it seems that life itself is not in the gift of the second law; that law is agent, facilitator, of a yet greater law – hypothetically, the law of fecundity, aka “the life principle.”
As usual, I’ve run on too long, and must stop for now. I hope I’ve laid the ground here for further discussion of what I feel are the key points at issue in our discussion.
Once again, thank you so much for writing, StJacques. You point to the hard questions always; and ever provide valuable perspectives on the subject at hand.
P.S.: I am hardly a “pagan.” :^)