Biological information

In this post I'm going to talk about biological information, which in turn is relevant in debates over evolution.

However this post is just an introduction. As such I'm going to simplify a lot of things. I realize I'm sacrificing technical accuracy but I'm doing so in order to get some main ideas across for those who might have zero background in all this but who wish to be able to make a foray into the debate over evolution.

Without further ado:

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, not a 'spark of life'. It is information, words, instructions. If you want a metaphor, don't think of fires and sparks and breath. Think, instead, of a billion discrete digital characters carved in tablets of crystal. If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.

(Richard Dawkins, "The power and the archives", The Blind Watchmaker)

1. Let's start with a book, computer code, and DNA:

   A book contains pages and text, but the pages are just paper and the text is just ink. Rather it's the words that convey the story. Not the words as text, but the words as information.

   A computer program contains code, but code is fundamentally just a pattern of binary digits: 0s and 1s. Rather it's code as a set of instructions for a computer to execute that makes a program functional. Hence code isn't merely bits but code is information.

   The DNA molecule contains four bases (adenine, cytosine, thymine, guanine), but these bases are ultimately atoms (e.g. carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen), and atoms are just physical particles. Rather DNA (as genes) is biological information which can be transcribed and translated to build an organism.

2. These aren't mere arguments from analogy (pace Dawkins). I'm not saying text is like code which is like DNA. Rather this is a comparison of information. I'm suggesting the common denominator in all three is information.

3. Yet information is invisible. We can't sense it, not directly, but it exists. How does that work on atheism/naturalism and evolution/neo-Darwinism?

4. An atheist like Dawkins might argue information emerges from physical properties. Such as in the arrangement of words, code, or DNA.

   However, even if so, what would cause the information to be arranged in a particular manner? How does inert matter arrange itself? What causes the letters of the English alphabet to form words if left on their own? What causes DNA to arrange itself in a particular genetic sequence if it is merely a non-living molecule? Let alone a molecule which self-organizes and self-perpetuates.

5. Is it natural selection? Since when did natural selection act at the atomic level? How does natural selection act on subatomic particles?

6. Moreover, even if a few letters could, somehow, by chance, arrange themselves into words, and words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, and chapters into a book, each subsequent step would seem to prove increasingly challenging. It's the old question of how long it takes for a monkey to type out the works of Shakespeare.

7. There may need to be new information at each subsequent step. A phrase like "In the beginning" may have arranged itself randomly, not to mention somehow well enough to convey meaning, but the sentence "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" contains more information. Namely "God created the heavens and the earth".

   Likewise it's one thing to have a single gene, but it's a lot more to have an entire genome. Let alone an entire organism.

   Hence a question which needs to be addressed is from where does this extra information come? Who or what is adding extra words or sentences or paragraphs into our book? Who or what is injecting additional information into each subsequent step?

   Otherwise is the information self-generated somehow, like an artificially intelligent computer writing new code for itself? How so? That seems highly implausible in the earliest lifeforms which surely would have not been anything like an A.I. computer.

8. Any time information is generated, there needs to be some way to check it for errors. Quality assurance. Yet could one physical entity (an error checking mechanism) have (more or less) co-evolved with another physical entity (e.g. a molecule like RNA or DNA)? How could a complex error-check have evolved roughly simultaneously with a presumably simple molecule in the origin of life?