In their book “The Language of Life,” George and Muriel Beadle, in the closing chapters, pondered the question: at what point in the biochemical evolution from chemical substances to living things do we break the chain and declare the boundary between the non-living and the living state?
This question in their opinion is impossible to answer because the could see no logical point in progression from the non-living to the living state at which we could break the chain and declare mere chemical substances living things; thus, we must make do with arbitrary artificial definition of biological life phenomenon.
Yet the seemingly unsolvable riddle may be solved by considering the point at which we go beyond the physical laws of chemistry into the domain of what appears, in DNA-RNA bio-systems assembly line function, programed robotic intelligence function.
The evidence from a close consideration of DNA-RNA-Protein assembly line system is that the behavior of bio-molecules in the bio-genetic system cannot by any stretch of imagination be accounted for wholly by invoking the physical laws of chemistry. We will have, sooner or later, to consider the behavior of the DNA-RNA system in terms of what we know in the age of information science and technology about the behavior of syntax driven intelligence systems. It would appear almost certain that the DNA-RNA genetic system transcended the domain of chemistry when it began using organic base sequences as symbols for defining the logic of concrete relational order and developed supporting mechanisms for translating symbolic order into their references in the real world in the process of building functional intelligent systems from “organic” compounds.
The popular analogy that biochemists often draw between the DNA-RNA protein synthesis and bio-systems assembly line system and artificial assembly line plants(a Volkswagen assembly plant for instance) is not idle analogy. It is real.
One of the key questions that organic chemists asked themselves in the early period of development of organic chemistry was: Is there anything about organic compounds over and above inorganic substances which account for their ability to impart “life” property to biological systems? Now it is understood that organic compounds are physical-chemical substances like any other and that there is no mysterious power or property in them accounting for the generation of living systems. Biological systems are, it would appear, wholly like artificial machines; integrated systems whose functional capabilities arise soley from the logic of their relational order.
It can be confidently proposed that the special “mysterious” element that goes into biochemical function in the building of biological living systems is the same as that which goes into converting a mix of “lifeless” metal parts into “living” Volkswagen beetle car: the logic or ordering to the end of a desired functional capability.
The behavior of the bio-genetic system of the DNA-RNA assembly line is no more merely “chemistry” than an artificial intelligence driven computation is mere electro-mechanical process. The common underlying reality is the goal-oriented program software, a set of information constituted into instructions detailing in symbolic logic order what the physical components must do to achieve a goal, namely, the assemblage of a biological organism in the first, and the assemblage of a Volkswagen Beetle in the other. The physics or chemistry of related physical components or hardware are only incidental to the fact of the function of an intelligence software program.
A software engineer could design a program for an assembly line with components analogous to the DNA-RNA-Protein bio-systems assembly line for assemblage of android machines from inorganic components: silicon,copper, iron, aluminum, rubber,etc. He could achieve his aim as constrained by the facts of the chemical properties of silicon,the physics of conductivity of copper wires without confusing the facts of components physics and chemistry with the software engineering problems he must solve.
I encourage the sensitive reader who can overcome the prejudice of the age old conflict of science with creationism to consider in the next article the behavior of “lifeless” molecules in the DNA-RNA-Protein system and ponder carefully the dividing line between bio-chemistry and assembly line engineering in the function of the bio-genetic system of “life.”
Tags: organic chemistry