Check out this article:
This article reports on the anticipated creation of artificial
life from the ground up. All information needed
to create this new life would be artificially (i.e., human)
created.
I emphasize the word information.
If this works, and I have no reason to doubt that it will - if not this time, soon - I take it to pretty much clinch the notion that information underlies life.
So I have a question - How does information spontaneously emerge from a non-information situation? Are we talking about an infinite number of monkeys typing out the works of Shakespeare and once something "works" it persists?
Was it simply a matter of happenstance that a particular set of molecules became self-replicating?
If so, it would seem to mean that there was a bright-line boundary, let's call it "S." Before S, there's no self-replication. After S, self-replication exists and eventually dominates the planet.
Did this postulated S-boundary event occur in more than one area of our planet nearly simultaneously once the various physical-chemical-thermal conditions emerged? Or did it emerge as a singular event in one particular place, meaning we all have the same common ancestor?
Does any evidence exist one way or another?
Also - now that we're about to create our own version of the S boundary event, can we make a distinction that means anything between human-design and natural-emergence? Or are we witnessing a convergence of information types?
And do these questions make any sense?
Regards,
Bal
many questions, some answers
Hi Bal,
You're asking the kinds of questions that, if we knew the answers, life would not be the mystery that it is. One thing to keep in mind with this form of 'artificial life' is that they still don't know how it works. All they're doing is paring down a "working genome" to the smallest size that can still instruct a cell containing that genome to metabolize and divide (which is an amazing achievement - I don't mean to minimize it). It's a big copy-paste operation, and ultimately, a trial and error process. The interactions among the RNA and proteins produced by this "minimal genome" are still staggeringly complex and beyond our present abilities to understand and describe.
I think most on this site would agree that life is defined by information, not substance. Steve Grand, in his book, compares our living bodies to lenticular clouds - clouds that take up residence around mountain peaks but are really made up of constant rivers of moisture that flow into, through, and out of the clouds. The reason the cloud "stays there" while the water moves through it has to do with the temperature and pressure dynamics around the mountain. In other words, it's the organization of the thing, not the stuff it is made of, and it's a great metaphor for our bodies.
At the risk of jumping disjointedly from one point to another: Many would say that the 'S' boundary, as you've called it, is not indicative of life, per se. For example, crystals self-replicate but only those who believe that everything is alive would say that crystals represent life. But it's a good bet that crystals were involved in the first emergent steps towards what we would unambiguously call life.
Your "infinite monkeys" idea is basically what most evolutionists believe (life arose by chance), and what most creationists object to. There's a more palatable middle road, however - a controversial new idea that the laws of thermodynamics are enough to set up a 'selection' process of increasing complexity. Which would mean that the universe is set up to evolve the complex forms that life takes.
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.13...
Here's a quote from the article that I like: “Darwinian competition and selection are not unique processes ... they're a complicated version of more fundamental chemical competitive exclusion.”