The question becomes what is language? Language is an organized or logical system capable of storing and
transmitting meanings or specified potentials.
Meaning is what we create in
our minds; specified potentials
simply means an outcome that is precise and complex in nature, and which
results when a specific linguistic expression is ‘read’ or ‘decoded’. It is a hallmark trait of specified
potentials that the events which result from them are not to be found or expected
to occur naturally13
DNA represented as Linguistic Information
.
When you run a piece of software, the specific pattern of
zeros and ones --on/off states of electric current read from magnetic storage--
yield a specific-potential. A potential is specific when without the
unique linguistic expression (in this case a program) there is no reason to
expect the outcome.
We would never expect a random or otherwise unintelligent
process to create a complex piece of software like Windows 7 operating system. We will never turn on a computer with a blank
hard drive, or a drive with random bits written to it and be able to interface
with it in any meaningful way, not even in a million or a trillion years.
Language is Arbitrary
DNA is Language and Language is arbitrary. Arbitrary means not derived from a prior
principle. Not the consequence of a
strict or necessary law – in other words designated.
Remember the geometric
behavior of normal molecules? They
always occur, because they behave according to the same physical laws. They are determined. And in cases where not determined in the
absolute sense – they are probabilistic.
(probabilistic oxidation
of iron)
Because events brought about by physical law are determined,
no outcome may ever be arbitrary. If it were, the law would have violated
itself!
Determined vs.
Arbitrated Systems
To understand the difference between determined and arbitrary
systems we can use a simple example.
Imagine throwing a six-sided die.
Now, what’s important, however, are not the probabilities
of any given sequence, but instead the fact that the numbers over time should
not form any reoccurring patterns.
So, if we roll the die 1,000 times, we should not expect the
sequence 1,2,2,1,3,1,5,5 to occur and reoccur. Nor
should any other specific rule or pattern appear. That is, if every time a 2 appears we notice
it is preceded by a 3 and followed by a 5 we should be suspicious. In a completely
random system, these occurrences suggest a violation.
Arbitrary or designated systems – such as all
languages – are DEFINED by the fact that they exhibit high-order patterns. That is, we will almost certainly find nested
patterns like: every time there’s a 1 it is preceded by a 2 and followed by a
3, etc. etc. (English opt. theory)
The more of these ‘high-order’ patterns – the less ‘entropy’
in the system . Entropy simply refers to
a systems relation to its point of equilibrium.
Less entropy means more order. At
a certain threshold, it becomes statistically
impossible that a signal is truly random.
In this system, equilibrium means the more rolls we throw,
the closer to the statistical (perfect) average of all numbers. 1/6 for each one. If we use the same example for our alphabet,
then, a text with millions of words should have equal a’s, b’c, c’s and so
on. 1/26 for each one. Yet we would not find this!! There would be
statistically fewer z’s than r’s. And R,
S , T, L, N, E would have the greatest number!
The moment a system exhibits these qualities, it ceases to
be random. In the case of die, they are
either loaded or intelligently manipulated, in the case of language it is
inherently intelligent, and intentionally designated.
Think
of it like the lottery, it isn’t suspicious – though improbable – for any one
person to win. After all someone has to
win! But if the same person won 3, or 4,
or 5 or 6 times in a row – there would be no doubt they are cheating or are
psychic. If the universe continued on
for a trillion trillion trillion years, and if raffles were held every second
of every day, no person would ever win the lottery 6 times in a row. The odds would be 1/49,000,000 ^ 6
But again, the statistics are beside the point! Regarding
DNA, the discussion has always revolved around what the “odds” are for DNA
sequences to occur ‘naturally’ (if we were forced to assume this were the case,
the answer is effectively ZERO like the repeating lotto winner)… but, our job
is easier than this! Because the fact about DNA is that it is already
demonstrated to be a chemical language! and languages, being arbitrary, are not arrived at by chance
(chance being a fixed principle) but by decree!.
An existing language or complex symbol-system can be modified or degraded by random
chance, but not generated. Language is and must be arbitrary – if it
were linked to a fixed principle, the negative entropy required would be
literally impossible to achieve (because we’d be asking a system with a fixed
rule to create more information originally within the system itself). Something from nothing, otherwise called a
Miracle.
Simply
No system of fixed laws can
create language.
So…
DNA is language,
language is arbitrary, arbitrary is not ever the consequence of physical law,
physical law, therefore, is insufficient to create DNA.
But supposing random chemical events could create a DNA
sequence. So what?
So, even if such a DNA sequence could be created by
accident, what are the odds it should encounter a Decoder? A decoder that
comes about by a completely independent process, and which has no knowledge of
how to ‘read’ the DNA or what to do with it?
How is this not fiction?
How likely is it that you can read the adjacent (assuming
you do not know Greek?).
If you cannot read
this – i.e. make sense of it – how can a chemical decoder make sense of
a language it has not been taught or designed to read? It
cannot. To believe it can is
supernaturalism – worse, it is simply irrational and flies in the facts of
basic facts about the world.
Walker and Davies mirror the notion of DNA as language:
While
standard information-theoretic measures,
such as Shannon information [72], have proved useful, biological information
has an additional quality which may roughly be called “functionality” – or
“contextuality” – that sets it apart from a collection of mere bits as
characterized by Shannon Information
content.
Biological
information shares some common ground with the philosophical notion of semantic
information (which is more commonly– and rigorously – applied in the arena
of “high-level” phenomena such as
language, perception and cognition).
The challenge presented by requiring that one
appeals to global context confounds any attempt to define biological information
in terms of local variables alone, and suggests something fundamentally
distinct about how living systems process information…
we
postulate that it is the transition to context-dependent causation –
mediated by the onset of information
control … We therefore identify the transition from non-life to life with a
fundamental shift in the causal structure of the system, specifically, a
transition to a state in which algorithmic information gains direct,
context-dependent, causal efficacy over matter.
When they speak of a “fundamental
shift in the causal structure of the system” they are referring to
causes non-physical, non-chemical: intelligent.
The onset of “information
control” is the moment of biological self-organization… or genesis. It is the point in time when a partial and
not impartial force created life. Anyone
may argue that this is a “strong claim” and “not supported by the evidence” yet
the trap has already been set, and the truth revealed. Though expressed in highly delicate language,
as we might expect given the author’s standing within the Institution, the
point is clear: natural causes are not sufficient to create biological systems.
Life, then, is the extension of a
superior intellect.
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