non-material information is not passive but, within living systems, actively controls hardware in a very similar way to the software / hardware systems in man-made computers. He proposed five levels of information which communicate the purpose at the top level and involve a transmitted signal at the bottom level. The five levels are Signal / Code / Message / Action / Purpose. Common to all information systems is a language of some kind involving the coded use of symbols, whereby the message is them transmitted. Consider just two of these two levels: (1) Code or language. (2) Message. As discussed earlier in section II, the code or language used in the signal is not defined by the material on which it sits, and the meaning and the instruction being passed from sender to receiver, is not determined by the code being used. The message transcends the code used, in exactly the same way as a message can be sent in German, French, Swedish or English. Rosenhouse (2022) has recently launched a full frontal attack on the top-down understanding of how non-material information contained within living systems, especially the DNA, controls the thermodynamics and cell machinery. He criticizes many including this author, and his constant refrain is imprecision and lack of definition of what information is, despite the clear statement above of Gitt, Compton and Fernandez. The following is typical (Rosenhouse 2022, p. 179) where he is reviewing the proposal made in the paper McIntosh (2009, p. 378) that non-material information constrains the local thermodynamics to be in a non-equilibrium state: McIntosh has imitated some of the form of mathematical writing, but his arguments are fatally imprecise, and he certainly has provided no reason for thinking genetic information cannot increase through the standard mechanisms. The polemics here are strong but nowhere does Rosenhouse himself define information or state precisely what the so called “standard mechanism” is. One presumes the “standard mechanism” he is referring to is the neo-Darwinian synthesis whereby it is asserted that genetic mutations will produce eventually new function in subsequent generations of a phenotype. But a) how precisely does abiogenesis of a DNA language system emerge when the substrate is held together by endergonic linkages as discussed in section IIIB above? What precisely is the thermodynamic pathway to achieve this? And b) how precisely can new information, which was not there before, be added, when the information is not defined by the material substrate which is undergoing the mutations? Rosenhouse admits on pages 170-171 that Information might be expressed in some material form, but is immaterial nevertheless. The same information can be carved in stone, written in ink on paper, shouted across a room, or stored on a hard drive, but the information is independent of its substrate. Ink on a page is governed by the same physical principles regardless of whether it expresses meaningful words or meaningless scribbles, but the former contains information while the latter does not. However, Rosenhouse has not stated what is the definition of meaning! Put another way, none of these evolutionary scientists can distinguish between meaningful words or meaningless scribbles precisely because they refuse to consider the top-down approach. We do grant our critics like Rosenhouse, that we do not yet have a full scientific model of biological design, but what he and other critics fail to realize is that we are asking very precise questions concerning how non-material information interacts with the substrate, which is what the McIntosh (2009) paper was about, and which Rosenhouse never addressed. Indeed, the bottom-up approach blocks progress in understanding the true nature of information, and its interaction with the underlying thermodynamics. The whole thesis of Rosenhouse that random mutations could evolve working molecular machines meets colossal road-blocks which have been ably described by Tour (2016). Tour, whose work at Rice University is primarily in synthetic organic chemistry, states just some of the main road-blocks: Many molecules in natural biological systems are homochiral. Their mirror images cannot do their work. Few reactions ever afford a one hundred percent yield; few reactions are free of deleterious byproducts. …... Make the wrong molecular intermediate, the synthetic chemist quickly learns, and all subsequent steps are compromised. Intermediate products are often unstable in air, sunlight or room light, or in water. Synthetic chemists work in seconds or minutes. It is this laborious trench work that separates the men from the boys. Craig Venter has imagined that because his team has performed a successful genome transplantation into a bacteria, and thus changed one species to another, that he has then proved life came without a mind behind it. Tan and Stadler (2020) have shown his supposed stairway to life is incoherent. See pages 178-182, 211-212 of this reference and especially the chart of Venter’s supposed stages to producing life on page 182. Each of these stages is either borrowing from existing cells or living organisms. Tan and Stadler rightly state on page 212 It appears that the more we know about life at the molecular level, the more we lose hope for finding a natural materialistic explanation for the origin of life. C. The thermodynamic efficiency of living systems controlled by language There have been many publications advancing the claim that the cellular machinery of life has emerged from matter over long ages. However, the actual evidence of digitally controlled cellular machinery indicates great design at the bio-molecular level and the work of Levin (2021) shows that there is also a whole new level of bioelectric signaling taking place within the cell as well. In the last few years careful calculations such as those by Kempes et al. (2017) show the staggering thermodynamic efficiency of the varMCINTOSH Language, codes, & interaction with thermodynamics 2023 ICC 323
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