Power, Information and Complexity In the Origin of Life (original) (raw)

This essay explores power, information and complexity in relation to the origin of life on earth. The origin of life requires decomposition of energy into power and information because such decomposition is necessary for feedback. The articulation of the decomposition of energy into power and information permits a significant correction of Francis Bacon’s dictum, Knowledge is power, which is one of the conceptual foundations of modern linear, reductionist science. Knowledge is not power; rather, knowledge orients power. The difference that life makes is seen as a different way of using energy, such as solar radiation, that is available to everything on earth. The difference in use is a consequence of living matter forming within the constraints of earth’s surface, which is the envelope of life or the biosphere. Complexity theory is used to conceptualize life as a consequence of morphogenetic constraints. Specific conditions of the earth, such as distance from the sun, speed of rotation and revolution, speed and extent of axis inclination, solar radiation, terrestrial and lunar gravitation, presence of free oxygen and protective ozone, Coriolis force, and ubiquity of water and land, are constraints on the existence of anything on or near the earth’s surface. Taken together, these constraints situate life on earth as neither a miracle, a mystery nor an accident. Life is rather a consequence. When we consider life as a consequence of morphogenetic constraints in the biosphere, then selection appears as an emergent feedback property of life. Viewed in this way, there are no random beginnings in life (Holland (2) 147-8), there are never infinite degrees of freedom in morphogenesis, there are no tinkered together contraptions in life (Kauffman 637 (1993)), and there is no order for free (Waldrop 120-5). This view also allows for a significant correction of the hypothesis that life occurs at the edge of chaos (Kauffman 29-279 (1993); Lewin 44-62; Waldrop 198-240): life occurs not at the edge of chaos but at the edges of different orders, none of which is chaotic. The viewpoint of this paper may be briefly characterized as structuralism with theories of transformation and structure. (Crutchfield 527-9)