Wouldn’t you be surprised if it was as high as 10%, Eddie?
Why would someone believe the science of geology, but disbelieve the science of genetics, or the science of archaeology… which is bound up in geology?
A useful reference that reviews QM and molecular biology is given by PCW Davies, in BioSystems 78 (2004) 69–79, “Does quantum mechanics play a non-trivial role in life?”. I think everyone would understand this area is extremely difficult and requires sober reflection.
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I wouldn’t be surprised. It was pretty much the default position for American fundamentalists and evangelicals until the 1960s or so, after all. Based on survey data (and personal experience), lots of people are pretty fuzzy about what they believe; lots are willing to accept an old earth, but are skeptical about evolution (especially human evolution). I would be surprised if the majority of creationists were strict young-earthers.
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Hi GJDS - I tremendously appreciate the citation, as the subject interests me greatly. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. If you could suggest something similar which is not so encumbered, or suggest a link to the same article where it can be downloaded without violating copyright laws, I would be grateful.
Peace,
Chris Falter
The issue is not that an “informational medium has to be different from the machinery that puts the information into action”, the issue is that the arrangement of the medium does not determine the effect it evokes in the system. That relationship is determined elsewhere by an entirely different arrangement of matter, in complete isolation from the reading of the medium. This discontinuity is what makes it physically possible for nucleic representations to result in amino acid effects.
You seem to be saying the same thing in different words. Yes, I agree, current life stores genetic information in nucleic acids and carries out (most) chemical processes through proteins; that system is IC. I’m asking why there has to be that separation. You say that universal physical principles require it, but what are they?
I’m sure you know that the interdependence of proteins and DNA is widely understood, and one of the motivations for the suggestion that an RNA world preceded our current DNA-based life. In that world, the nucleic acid both stores information and carries out much of the chemical processing. So what physical principles prohibit the existence of RNA world?
Hi Steve,
You’ve gone from suggesting that I make an unwarranted assumption (that the system needs to be the way it is) to asking me why I don’t assume it can be different.
I can only ask you to consider what I’ve already written. The arrangement of the medium does not determine what the effect will be. It is this discontinuity that creates a representational medium - a medium that can be arranged into permutations and translated into effects that are independent of local dynamics. This is what enables the informational capacity that the system needs to record itself into memory, and begin the cell cycle. The RNA world hypothesis does not have this independence, does not create a representational medium, does not establish combinatorial permutations, and doesn’t have the informational capacity required to organize the heterogeneous cell. It’s limited by the very dynamics that a representational organization is entirely independent of.
It should be remembered that this is not fundamentally about RNA, or DNA or proteins. This is first and foremost about organization. There is no physical property of a representation that makes it a representation. It only gains that status by being organized as such in a system.
And you really don’t need to ask me if I think the RNA world is possible. It’s a non-falsifiable proposition, and in the end it doesn’t matter what I think anyway. Anyone is free to think of it as they wish. But the system is the way it is in order to physically accomplish what must be done. And the only other instance that such a system can be found is in recorded language and mathematics – two unambiguous correlates of intelligence.
Hi Chris,
I have a copy - I am not using it for professional activities, and I assume the same holds for you. On this basis, if you send my your email via BioLogos, I will respond by sending you the pdf copy.
Cheers
I did not ask why you don’t assume it can be different. I asked how you know it can’t be different.
I am considering what you have written. You wrote “Irreducible complexity can be shown to be the primordial condition of life.” You also wrote, “So, without these IC relationships, the system could not physically accomplish what must be done, and the living cell could not be organized. It is a dictate of physical law.” These are not statements about life and cells based on DNA+protein, but statements about life and cells, period. You claim they are universally true, based on physical laws. What I’m asking you is, what physical laws prohibit RNA world life? You do say this,
But that’s just a bare assertion, and it’s something you couldn’t possibly know – no one knows enough about RNA chemistry to say whether a heterogeneous cell based on RNA, or RNA+proteins, is possible.
As far as I can tell, you’re either making a statement about life based on DNA and proteins that is entirely noncontroversial, or you’re making a statement about all possible life that you’ve provided no evidence for.
I asked how you know it can’t be different.
I explained this from an organizational point of view; how a thing can be specified within a system, in a material universe where nothing inherently specifies anything else.
But that’s just a bare assertion, and it’s something you couldn’t possibly know – no one knows enough about RNA chemistry to say whether a heterogeneous cell based on RNA, or RNA+proteins, is possible.
As you may have noticed, I did not say anything about what was and was not possible with RNA. In fact I said just the opposite; the RNA world hypothesis is non-falsifiable. It is not possible to say that it is not possible. But an RNA molecule that replicates itself creates its product based on local dynamics. A semiotic translation system doesn’t. Without semiosis, the system does not establish representations, and without representations there are no permutations, and without permutations, there isn’t the informational capacity to organize the heterogeneous cell.
BIO…
If your point is that God (or some designer) was NECESSARY to make RNA . . . why don’t we all just say that it is certainly a possibility.
Whether that is the ONLY way to make RNA … I doubt if any of us can really say.
George, since you don’t understand the issues, would you please not misrepresent me following my posts?
No, I didn’t notice that. What I noticed, and what you have not yet explained, is your statement, “Irreducible complexity can be shown to be the primordial condition of life.” You haven’t shown that to be true. If RNA world is possible then it could be the primordial state of life, and thus not irreducibly complex (at least not based on your semiotic argument), which would contradict your statement.
Given your definitions, true.
False. Imperfectly replicating RNA molecules produce lots of permutations. In fact, they produce them more rapidly than DNA does.
Yes, I have explained it. To organize the heterogeneous cell requires the capacity to specify something and place it under temporal control. Why does it take two objects to specify something within a system? Because nothing in this material universe inherently specifies anything else. It requires one object to act as a representation, and a second object to establish what is being represented. And indeed, this is exactly what is found inside the cell.
The definitions are based on universal observation, as presented in peer-reviewed papers appearing in the literature. If you think those observations are incorrect, then point them out.
As stated, combinatorial permutations refers to spatial arrangements in the representations of a semiotic system. If there are no representations established, then there are no permutations of them.
You have not explained why a heterogenous cell requires a representational system of the sort you’re talking about. Let’s be more concrete. Suppose a cell contains an RNA molecule that promiscuously copies RNA molecules, a second RNA that encodes a useful protein and a third RNA that translates RNA into protein, along with lots of other RNAs. Does that constitute a representation in the sense you’re using?
Definitions are not based on observation and cannot be incorrect, since they are arbitrary. (Semiotics, you know.)
I think you mean “unstated”, since you didn’t say that. All you said was that without representations, there can be no permutations. That’s very much not a standard definition of “permutation”.
.
I’ve explained exactly why.
How does the RNA encode a protein, and how does the other RNA translate it?
And yet, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at 1 atmosphere.
“The arrangement of the medium does not determine what the effect will be. It is this discontinuity that creates a representational medium - a medium that can be arranged into permutations and translated into effects that are independent of local dynamics.”
If BOTH sides agree that God intervened in human evolution, I really don’t see the point of arguing about genetic molecules.
Good question, and dumb hypothetical by me. Take it down a step: consider a cell with an RNA that replicates all RNAs and one or more functional RNAs. Is that a representational system or not?
And yet, water still boils at the same temperature even if you adopt a different definition for degree.
I didn’t question whether representations could be permuted. What’s required for a heterogeneous cell is the generation of a range of functional chemicals. That certainly can occur through permutation of a representation (as it does with modern DNA-base life) but I still don’t see any reason why it has to occur that way. In (hypothetical) RNA world, it occurs through permutation of the functional chemicals themselves. RNA can mutate and create a wide range of functional molecules, and it does not require an independent representation.
My understanding of your positions:
- Life requires a representational medium.
- Life may be possible on RNA in RNA world.
- RNA world does not include a representational medium.
Those three claims are inconsistent, so presumably I’ve failed to understand something.
I agree with Steve that life could be possible with RNA. In that case the genotype phenotype connection is easy, since its found on one molecule and no translation, or code are needed. BUT, we now know that such a world, while possible is barely alive. Ribozymes are not great replicators or great catalysts, and there are other major problems with how RNA based life would work, not the least of which is evolution. And if fact, if there were an RNA world, (not an impossibility) that begs the question of how we got from there to DNA. At that point all of Biosemiosis arguments come into play. These issues are far from trivial in my view. It isnt enough to say “And then DNA evolved” or “and then, little by little a crude code formed and evolved until it got better and better”. There are too many very serious issues with those statements, as Koonin, Yockey and others have stated.
It’s not my field, but from what I do know I’d certainly agree that there are lots of unsolved problems, both with RNA world and with the transition from it. It remains true that there is no scientific theory of the origin of life, or of the evolution of the last common ancestor. For all we know both are impossible (or so improbable to be effectively impossible) by natural means. But that statement is a quite different from saying that there are known, universal physical principles that prohibit those steps from occurring naturally. We simply do not know enough about possible routes to draw that conclusion.
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