Comments to Mark Burgin and James Barnham

Dear FIS-ers:

I refer to James Barnham's response to Pedro and Gyorgy, as quoted by Mark
Burgin on May 17, and to the contradiction pointed out by the latter.

Barnham writes:

>we must always be careful to distinguish the epistemic and ontic planes
> when thinking about life and information, and realize that our knowledge
> of the cell is one thing, and the cell's own existence is something
>else.

I agree fully, as long as we do the same for the physical world, and add
to the above: "Our knowledge about the physical world is one thing, and
the physical world's own existence is something else. In the first,
information appears through OUR interactions with the physical world--in
the second, information plays no role 'in its own right' " .

I fully agree with the summary statement given in that same response:

> while in the subjective, extrinsic, observer-dependent sense,
> all structure can be considered information---for us, as observers---in
> the objective, intrinsic, observer-independent sense, there simply was
> no information at all before the origin of life, because there were no
> systems yet able to enter into the right sort of dynamical interactions
> that are in fact constitutive of information-use.

Concerning Mark Burgin's noted "contradiction ("There is no information
where there is no life, hence Life cannot exist!"), I'd like to convince
you that there is no contradiction at all! To do that, let me bring up
something I did not see mentioned too often in the FIS discussion so far:
EVOLUTION.

Indeed, as I state on several occasions in my paper (see the end of
section 4), information and life should have emerged together in the
course of evolution. In other words, life did not emerge DUE to
information processes, but WITH information processes. No doubt, there was
a prebiotic "transition period" in which (and I quote from my paper)
"...large and complex polymer-like macromolecules emerged as code-carrying
templates whose effect on other molecules in their environment is to bind
them through a catalytic process into conglomerates according to patterns
represented by the code. Some of these polymers also served as templates
for the production of others like themselves--those more efficient in this
process would multiply....Concerning these macromolecules, we can say that
beyond a certain degree of complexity, information as such begins to play
the decisive role in organizing the chemical environment. Because of the
role of information as the controlling agent, these molecules can trigger
chemical reactions that would be highly improbable to occur naturally
under the same environmental conditions and energy sources...".

Concerning a later stage in the evolution of life and the question of
"information stored in the genetic structures of an organism", I state in
my paper "...the information content is not derived from physical laws and
deliberately stored, but ... emerges gradually in the course of a long
Darwinian process of selective adaptation. It could be called an
"unreflected learning process by trial and error"... in which ... the
prearranged accord between sender and recipient--an essential part of
information-based interactions--comes into existence. There is no
pre-existing information or purpose in adaptive evolution--the latter just
happens if the circumstances are right."

And in Earth's environment, they were right!

Juan

Juan G. Roederer
c/o Director's Office
The Abdus Salam
International Centre for Theoretical Physics
Strada Costiera 11
34014 Trieste
Italy

Phone: +39 (040) 2240607
Received on Sun May 19 10:33:27 2002