Monday, February 21, 2011

7.1 EVOLUTION and ENTROPY


The fundamental postulate of evolution by natural selection is design without a designer, which from my previous discussion about design means a natural origin for semantic (or signal) information since every 'design' is specified by semantic information. Lets just for a moment ignore the intuitive improbability of such an occurrence and flesh out the 'algorithm' by which this process works.

Beginning with a hypothetical replicating molecule (about 600 atoms according to Prof Shapiro) it is expected there will be variations captured at the moment of duplication somewhat equivalent to copying errors. In molecular terms some of those may affect the quality and or speed of replication and the natural outcome of this will be a general increase in those more successful replicators. In succeeding generations this process will steadily accumulate all those changes that happen to improve reproductive success. As populations of these increase in number they will tend to reduce the pure chance failure of the occasional top dog or best replicator like being eaten by some competing molecule. It is also logical that any defensive or offensive improvements which reduce further the chances of being 'eaten' also contribute to success without necessarily speeding up or otherwise improving reproduction itself and so become 'selectable' traits. It is then simply proposed that there is no barrier to the continuation of this process through any degree of complexity imaginable, and why not. Its simple, perfectly understandable and even eloquent like the very best discoveries. It is the last point that is the central issue about which this entire blog is written. Are there really no barriers to ascending complexity using this algorithm?

The earth is where this incredibly improbable event took place over 4.5 billion years according to evolution theory. The earth is not an isolated system as required by the second law. However notwithstanding the hypothetical raining down of proteins from outer space (panspermia), by that law the processes that produced them here must also pay the entropy cost for them.

Panspermia was postulated by Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe  as a consequence of  their clear understanding that evolution alone could not account for all the diversity of life. see [http://www.panspermia.org/chandra.htm]

Have a nice day..

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