TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I Chapter 1: Principles of Creativity Some Basic Considerations. The Biological Organism and the Machine. David Hume's Objections .2 Apparent Exception to Section 1...4 Time, Creativity and the Evolution of Machine Structure...6 Infinite Time and Infinite Quanta of Information. Inorganic Matter..9 The Hybridization of Information with Matter and Its Connection with the Definition of the Term "Miracle"10
Chapter II: Primary and Secondary Information and Its Sources. The Origin and Development of the von Neumann Machine excluding Consciousness Theoretical Considerations..15 Actual and Potential Information..16 Some Further Details on the Actual Information required for the Synthesis of von Neumann Machines..22 The von Neumann Machine and the Phenomenon of Consciousness...23 Accounting for the Origin of Information - Coupled with Dimension Theory...27 PART II
Chapter III: Materialism and its Relationship to Information Materialism and Positivism...35 Scientific and dialectical Materialism..37 Communism and positivistic Ideology..39 The Effectiveness of political Dialectic and of Natural Selection ...42
Chapter IV: Materialism in the Light of Modern Physical Research Factors which have led to the Abdication of Scientific Materialism..47 Recent Developments in Astronomy and the Validity of Scientific Materialism...47 Light Refraction and Gravitation.50
Chapter V: Evolutionary Theory, Abiogenesis and Evolutive Speciation The Irrelevance and Impotence of Evolutionary Theory in Matters of Experimental Abiogenesis...59 Attempts at the Synthesis of Life In vitro.64 The Arthur Komberg and the Sol Splegeiman Syntheses.........65 PART III
Chapter VI: The Origin of the Genetic Code: an Alternative View The Nature of the Genetic Code..73 Carl Sagan's and others' Views on Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, Its Falsification or Verification.79 SETI and its Verification: Its Consequences for Darwinian Theory....83
Chapter Vll: Origin and Function of Information in Abiogenesis and Evolutive Speciation: Ancient and Modern Wisdom on the Six Days of Creation and the Age of the Earth Information Theory as the Decisive Factor Negating the Darwinian Evolutionary Concept but Suggesting a Scientific Alternative...87 The Alchemists and Their Investigations...94 Hindrances Standing In the way of the Development of New Theories of Abiogenesis and of Evolutive Speciation..96 Ancient and Modem Wisdom Concerning the Six Days of Creation...100 Mechanisms of Transfer of Factor "I" at the Hybridization with Matter In Biology and Their Relationship to "t" ..103 The Age of the Universe, the Solar System and the Earth.....106
Chapter VIII: Materialism In the Light of an Analogy and some Practical Examples Flatland and Its Environment..109 A Disquieting Event In Flatland...110 Dr. Albertus Zweisklnus' Visit and Verdict on the Recent Happenings In Flatland...114 Dr. Albertus Zwelstelnus' Views on the Nature of Dimensions and Reality..121 Some Purely Theological Consequences of Dr. Zwelstelnus' Conjurations..123 Addendum.123
Some two hundred years ago there raged a fierce controversy in scientific circles concerning the validity or non-validity of the phlogiston theory of combustion. Priestley, at that time a recognized authority on this subject, was more or less pressured into leaving England for America just on account of his adherence to the phlogiston theory. He remained in America until his death there and never changed his opinion about the validity of the theory. He stuck to his guns even after Lavoisier and others had shown by the use of the balance that Priestley's phlogiston, if the theory was correct, must have a negative weight!
It had long been known that if zinc metal was heated to redness it burned with a brilliant flame, which observation was interpreted by the adherents of the phlogiston theory to be due to the escape of phlogiston from the zinc during combustion. The resulting white residue left after combustion was known as calx of zinc. According to the phlogiston theory, zinc calxwas then zinc minus phlogiston. That is, metallic zinc = calx of zinc minus phlogiston, which latter escaped during combustion. Phlogiston made, as it were, the flame - one could even "see" it escaping by watching the flame during combustion!
Further experiments bore out this interpretation of the facts! For, if calx of zinc was heated with a substance rich in phlogiston, then some of the phlogiston in that phlogiston rich substance was transferred to the calx of zinc to yield zinc back again. So the phlogiston interpretation of the experimental facts was "clinched". Phosphorus shows the same behavior. For phosphorus on combustion loses, allegedly, phlogiston forming thereby an acid - phosphorous acid. Thus phosphorus consists of acid plus phlogiston! The real state of affairs was, of course, inverted by the phlogiston interpretation of combustion experiments. The alleged loss of phlogiston during combustion was, in fact, the gain of oxygen. It had been known since the sixteenth century that the calx of a metal was always heavier than the metal itself, showing that, if the phlogiston theory of combustion was true, then the phlogiston allegedly escaping during combustion must have a negative weight, for the metal was lighter than the calx. When phlogiston was combined with the calx to give the metal, the latter weighed less than the calx! Lavoisier and others showed that the alleged loss of phlogiston during combustion was, in fact a gain of oxygen and that this oxygen produced the increased weight of the calx.
Oxygen was then generated as a gas and duly weighed . Needless to say it showed a healthy positive weight, thus utterly discrediting the whole basis of the phlogiston theory, which had held sway so long in the scientific world of experiment.
But Priestley was just as utterly adamant as was the Lavoisier party. He (Priestley) died as an ardent, though frustrated, embittered protagonist of the phlogiston theory of combustion. However, the younger generation began gradually to be convinced by the force of experiment and by the use of the balance. Priestley's inability to shape his theories according to ever advancing experimental facts had apparently incapacitated his thought processes. He just could not see all this new fangled reasoning based on balances and gasometers. It is, of course, a fact that, after puberty has been reached in man and animals, the plasticity of the mind in dealing with new facts and theories can become impaired. The old adage has it that "you cannot teach old dogs new tricks . " Truly, a warning to all of us as we advance in age! But it need not be so - if one learns the discipline of strict and experimentally conditioned thought from youth up. The laying down of set ideologies during youth, according to which one learns to think, appears to block the mind for new thought. A student asked me recently (he was about 23 years old), what theories was he to believe on origins. I told him to set his mind on none until he had gathered a lot more evidence on all the possibilities. The secret is to keep one's mind effectively open while gathering the relevant facts.
Priestley's mind was so obsessed with the evidence of the phlogiston theory of combustion that he was entirely incapable of appreciating new evidence pointing in the reverse direction. We find ourselves today in a similar position with regard to the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution. A positive and clinching example of this assertion will not be out of place. Here it is:
It has been discovered in recent years that the genetic programs (genomes) of higher biological organisms consist of something close to a thousand million bits of information (cf. Michael Denton, Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, Bumett Books, 1985, p. 35n, information which a library of about one thousand volumes could Just about contain. Genomes are known which may contain more than one thousand million bits of information. They include intricate algorithms in encoded form specifying the growth, development and probably also the death of billions of cells. It must be steadfastly kept in mind that were comparable information storage and retrieval systems to occur in any machine made by man, their attribution to random Darwinian processes followed by selection would be treated as a disorder of the central nervous system. The biologist today will remember that the basis of Darwinian theory was developed a hundred and more years ago, that is, at a time when the information theoretical aspect and nature of the genome governing all biology was totally unknown. The chemical basis of the genetic code with its supreme information storage and retrieval system, its replication mechanisms and its self-diagnosis of defects and the chemical repair systems were all undreamed of. At that time not even the term information theory had appeared in the scientific literature.
Surely, viewed realistically and in the light of modern information theory, it is an affront to simple common sense and to basic reasoning processes to postulate that the structure of the information storage and retrieval system common to all biology lies in randomness. For the system builds, services and generally monitors all the biological mechanisms we at present know about in the most complex von Neumann type of machine known to science - the biological cell. For, as we shall see, the biological machine belongs exactly in this category with, however, the faculty of consciousness tacked on to the machine in its more developed categories. How could such a complex machine ever have arisen in random processes subject to natural law only, followed by natural selection seeing that even a simple machine cannot and does not so arise?
The more things change, say our friends the French, the more they remain the same. How could any scientist with the superior intelligence of a Priestley ever have dared to propagate in the face of clinching evidence to the contrary - and to propagate all his life - the phlogiston theory of combustion, when it had been known for years that the calx of a metal was heavier than the metal itself? However, Priestley performed precisely this feat of intellectual acrobatics right up to his dying day. He performed it with energy, venom and sarcasm, too. All reason and evidence towards the untenability of the phlogiston theory of combustion was totally lost on him, so intellectually blind did his crazy theory involving the negative weight of phlogiston make him and his thought processes. May not a future generation well ask how any scientist, in full possession of his intellectual faculties and with adequate knowledge of information theory could ever execute the feat of cognitive acrobatics necessary to sincerely believe that a (supremely complex) machine system of information storage and retrieval, servicing millions of cells, diagnosing defects and then repairing them in a teleonomic von Neumann machine manner, arose in randomness - the antipole of information? An information storage and retrieval system allegedly arose in randomness, the opposite and antipole of the information with which it deals! This latter day Neo-Darwinian theory beats Priestley's intellectual feat by a considerable lead! For to propose that just one single book volume edited in a specific language and code wrote itself by entirely random processes followed by selection would surely produce raised eyebrows even in Darwinian scientific circles - but that 1000 just such volumes should have arisen so, really does go a little far. Yet the Darwinian Establishment still thinks this is the case, so it must be so!
Over and above this, the situation is such today that any scientist expressing doubts about evolutionary theory is rapidly silenced. Sir Fred Hoyle(2) the famous astronomer, was well on his way to being nominated for the Nobel Prize. However, after the appearance of his books expressing mathematically based doubts as to Darwinism, he was rapidly eliminated. His books were negatively reviewed and no more was heard about his Nobel Prize. The case of the halo dating methods developed by Robert V. Gentry(3) tell a similar story. Gentry gave good evidence that the earth's age, when measured by the radiation halo method using polonium, might not be so great as had been thought when measured by more conventional methods. A postulate of this type would have robbed Darwinism of its main weapon, namely long time periods. Gentry lost his research grants and job at one sweep.
It is by such methods, often bordering on psycho-terror, that the latter day phlogiston theory (Neo-Darwinism) still manages to imprint itself in pretty well all scientific publications today. I myself gave the Huxley Memorial Lecture at the Oxford Union, Oxford University, on February 14th, 1986. My theses were well received even by my opponents in the debate following the lecture. But I have been to date unable to persuade any reputable scientific journal to publish the manuscript. The comment is uniformly that the text does not fit their scheme of publications.
I recently (Dec. 1986) received an inquiry from the Radcliffe Science Library, Oxford, asking if I had ever really held the Huxley Memorial Lecture on February 14th. 1986. No records of my having held the lecture as part of the Oxford Union Debate could be found in any library nor was the substance of this debate ever officially recorded. No national newspapers, radio or TV station breathed a word about it. So total is the current censorship on any effective criticism of Neo-Darwinian science and on any genuine alternative. Ineffective criticism of evolution is lampooned ad nauseam by all the media, But why then does the Establishment stick to Evolutionary Theory ? Certainly not because experimental evidence encourages the establishment to do so. Why then? Apart from the fact that the destruction of Darwinian thought would at the same time destroy the so-called scientific basis of the Marxism and Socialism under which both East and West languish and which govern not only their science but also their politics and finances, there is another important reason for sticking to Darwin. It is as follows: There exists at present no other purely scientific alternative to Darwin which postulates a purely scientific materialistic basis for biogenesis and biology. To repeat: There is at present no purely scientific alternative to Darwin. Creationism, being religious, is of little use to the materialistic thought of today. It is simply an irrelevant subject worthy only of ridicule.(4) For Darwin himself destroyed the necessity of believing in God. He explained the world of biology with the help of purely naturalistic materialistic forces. After Darwin, nothing in the way of supernaturalism or transcendence to explain biology was required. God and allegedly supernatural forces are not amenable to scientific manipulation or experimentation, they are on principle far too elusive to be considered seriously by the pragmatic materialistic mind of our generation. They are therefore irrelevant.
We are left then with the natural forces as the sole biogenetic agents. These then are the forces with which Darwin (6) proposed to explain biology. He largely created thereby the atmosphere of present day naturalistic materialism. If these forces did not produce biology, what else did? Scientists whose upbringing and education are Darwinian and therefore naturalistic, have for this reason no real alternative to Darwinism. Here we have perhaps one of the main reasons for the victory of Darwinism even today, even though the accumulating evidence of science is steadily against the theory. This is the reason why the Establishment sticks to Darwinian theory. In their eyes there is nothing else on offer to be taken in the least seriously. (But compare W. Paley (7)).
It would not be true, however, to say that all the evidence was against Darwinism in Darwin's own day and age. For Darwin could gloss over the difficulties presented by the fossil record which then, as today, gave no sign of the gradualism, step by step change of one species into another and higher one, which Darwin had proposed. Today we know for certain that gradual change is not that which the fossils bear out. In Darwin's day one could not yet be sure of this. They speak today unanimously of the sudden appearance of brand new species in the fossil record. For this reason Stephen J. Gould and Miles Eldredge (8) have had such success with their punctuated equilibrium brand of Darwinian evolution. But the overwhelming evidence against Darwinian theory today lies in the discipline of which Darwin and his contemporaries knew just nothing, namely in the discipline of information theory.
It is this new dimension opened up by information theory which has overwhelmed all types and all vestiges of Darwin's type of thought. For it alone explains the sudden arisal of new species in the fossil record. It is information theory alone which is able to present reasonable ideas on its own subject as seen in the DNA molecule.
Only information theory can explain the genesis of self replicating information storage and retrieval systems in biology. In the present volume we have, therefore, endeavored to present and to develop a scientifically sound theory based on the information factor as a scientific alternative to Darwinian hypotheses. Darwin thought that natural random phenomena, sifted and filtered by natural selection, could turn up biology. We know today what Darwin did not and indeed could not know, namely that biology's very heart depends upon an information storage and retrieval system which cannot conceivably arise in the stochastic (random) forces of natural law, but must arise in surprise effects or information which cannot the derived from natural laws Darwin, had he lived in our era, would have put biology and its genesis down to the following formulae:
1.Matter + time + energy = primeval life (= eobiont, protobiont). This formula would be succeeded by evolutive speciation (sic) according to the formula:
2.Primeval life + ffme + natural selection = evolutive speciation or "evolution". In the light of today's understanding of information theory and its surprise effects these two formulae must be supplemented today by the factor "I" or informational effects. Thus:
3.Matter + time + energy + I = primeval life. This formula would be followed by the one for evolutive speciation or "evolution":
4.Primeval life + time + energy + I = evolutive speciation or "evolution" where I = information, surprise effects or "know-how" according to Shannon and Weaver.
It is a fact of science that in order to generate any machine the factor information "I" must be hybridized with matter. In the following text we suggest that in order to arrive at the mechanisms (i. e . machine phenomena) of biology, the same factor "I" is just as necessary as factor t (= time) and factor energy. (For literature on recent developments in so-called molecular evolution see Note 9).
Darwin's theory is not so much wrong as it is deficient in the one vital factor necessary to arrive at any teleonomic apparatus such as a machine, including the biological machine. It is not our business as scientists to specify just where factor "I" came from, (although we hint at some possibilities) just as it is not the business of the information scientist to specify just where the information, with which he earns his daily bread, originally came from. Noam Chomsky believes that the origin of information (5) is a subject beyond the capacity of the human mind to grapple with. However, regardless of the origin of the information necessary to generate any machine, one fact remains crystal clear. It is that, before matter can be aggregated to any teleonomic machine (biological or otherwise) it must first be hybridized with the surprise effects known as information = "I". The alternative we here offer to Darwinian theory remains strictly scientific in that it recognizes one vital fact: - the necessity of factor "I" before any machine can be generated from raw matter, This generalization comprises and includes biological mechanisms. We offer no explanation as to the source of factor "I". That is a matter, according to Noam Chomsky (private communication to the author) (5), beyond the capacity of the human mind, because it is and remains a true surprise effect i. e. not derived from natural law in its generation. It would need therefor genuine revelation to solve the problem of the origin of factor "I" - a matter which every scientist must on principle reckon with. In this volume we offer no speculations on the origin of these surprise effects - though we do give some scientifically valid hints. What we do say is, that without factor "I" the genesis and evolution of no machines, teleonomy nor biology (an example of teleonomical machinery) can possibly be conceived. This is a theoretical and an experimental fact. The alternative we offer concerns simply the common sense necessity today in the age of computers of such a factor "I" in the synthesis of all machines including the mechanical and biological ones.
The above facts have nothing to do with religious convictions, though, of course, they may, like all other facts, eventually lead to such. The facts are simply a scientific matter and as such we present them here as leading to a scientific alternative to evolutionary theory.
1.J. von Neumann, (1966), Theory of self Reproducing Automata, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
2.Sir Fred Hoyle and C.Wickramasinghe (1981), Evolution from Space,J.M.Dent and Sons, London.
3.Robert v. Gentry, Creation's Tiny Mystery, 1986, Earth Science Associates, Knoxville, USA
4.Stephen Jay Gould, The Fossil Fraud that neuer was, New Scientist, March 12th.,1987, pp.32-36. Creationists are referred to here as "baddies" (p.36). See also "The Panda's Thump", W.W. Norton and co., Inc., New York and London, 1980.
5.See private communication from Noam Chomsky of the M. l. T., Boston, USA "I am afraid that I cannot suggest anything that seems to me of any value on the topic you mention (the ultimate origin of information). I've written myself on the topic, but only to suggest that I doubt that the human mind can come to terms with the problem - or "mystery", as I called it trying to distinguish approachable problems from impenetrable mysteries, In a chapter of my book "Reflections on Language" (Pantheon, 1975).
6.Darwin, Charles, Origin of Species, 1859, "I can see no limit to the amount of change to organic beings which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's power of selection". (cf.6th. edition, ed. l962, Collier Books, New York).
7.W. Paly, (1818), Natural Theology on Evidences and Attributes of the Deity, 18th. Edition, Lackington, Ailen & Co., and James Sawyers, Edlnburgh. "We would never infer in the case of a machine, such as a watch, that its design was due to natural processes such as wind and rain; rather, we would be obliged to postulate a watchmaker. Living things are similar to machines,. . . we must therefore infer by analogy that their design is also the result of intelligent activity. ...David Hume...pointed out that organisms may be only superficially like machines but natural in essence...Hume's criticism is generally considered to have fatally weakened the basic analogical assumption upon which the inference to design is based..." "Nor has there been during the last two centuries sufficient evidence for believing that living organisms were like machines in any profound sense." Quoted from M. Denton, Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, Hutchnson Publishing Group, 17-21 Conway Street, London WIP 6 JD, England. Scarcely anyone today who knows his biology and biological chemistry would doubt today that the biological cell is a metabolic machine, which fact reestablishes the validity of Paley's long ridiculed argument and silences David Hume finally and totally.
8.Eldredge, N. and Gould, Stephan Jay, (1972) Punctuated Equilibria: an Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism in Models in Paleontology, ed. Schopf, Freeman, Cooper and Co., San Francisco, pp. 82-115.
9.It is commonly asserted in certain molecular biochemical circles that molecular evolution can be followed by the changes in sequences and substituents on nucleotide molecules. Dates have been calculated for the time required for such alleged chemical evolution. Christian Schwabe's work at the Department of Biochemistry, Medical University of South Carolina, USA, throws very sanguine new light on the validity of such speculations on chemical evolution: See: Christian Schwabe, Trends in Biochemical Sciences, July 1986, p. 280 for an enlightened assessment of the value and validity of such work on molecular evolution. The varying substituents on hemoglobin and other molecules have been used for the above mentioned purposes in illustrating trends and time requirements for such alleged evolution.
Before Darwin and his "Origin of Species", leaders of scientific thought generally believed that the teleonomic (telos = aim) and other creativity observed in the inorganic as well as in the biological world was reasonably attributable to a Supreme Creator. Otherwise they could not reasonably account for the teleonomy (order and purpose) seen throughout the Creation they knew. Their scientific observations forced the majority of scientists and philosophers of those pre-Darwinian times to believe in a Supreme Planning and Executive Creator, almost regardless of their particular purely religious convictions. It would probably be fair to state that a man such as Linnaeus and many others with him believed in a Creator as a First Cause on scientific grounds. They believed too that the biological species we have with us now are substantially the same as those existing at the Creation because they never had observed either in fossils or life any interspecies change.
To put the matter more lucidly, typological thought and the idea of the relative fixity of species governed biological creed from the time of Aristotle (cf. Michael Denton, Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, p. 19, Hutchinson Publishing Group, London WIP 6JD, England). That is, it was believed that there were fixed bounds to species variation determined by the form of the underlying type, beyond which biological variation could not go: nature was, therefore, fundamentally discontinuous (M. Denton, loc. cit. page 19) and not continuous as Darwin thought.
Such pre-Darwinian thought attributed, then, creativity to a Supreme Creator and held that this Source was also responsible for the maintenance of the Creation too. Variations within strict typological limits were possible, but certainly not unlimited interspecies evolutionary changes.
However, after Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, this type of thought changed radically. Darwin himself, from being originally an orthodox Christian believing in the relative fixity of species, came later and gradually to believe that species were variable to an unlimited degree, (see foreword Note 6)) given time spans which were extended enough. Interspecies change supplanted the already recognized idea of intraspecies change. Darwin's so-called gradualism postulated that in the last analysis all forms of biology were derived from a single simple cell which, by an unbroken series of small gradualistic changes, gave rise to an unbroken chain of steps from the original cell up to man himself. Biology was, in fact, strictly continuous.
There was one great aspect of reality about which Darwin - and indeed everyone of his epoch - knew nothing. I am referring to the modern science of information theory. For, if a primeval kind of amoebae is to develop up to a primate, that primeval cell will have to gather all sorts of new holistic information on how to make kidneys, livers, four chambered hearts, cerebra and cerebella etc. For the synthesis of such reduced entropy systems, as for example a primate brain, requires all kinds of solid actual holistic information which neither the matter of which the primeval amoebae consisted nor the intact amoebae cell contained. Similarly, inorganic matter will have to assemble huge numbers of bits of holistic information before it can synthesize an amoebae.
Assuming that the original primeval form of life was a kind of an amoebae, where did it obtain the almost infinite number of bits of holistic information required to be stored on its DNA information storage and retrieval system? In order to transform the amoebae type of cell to a mammal, a primate, an octopus or a bee orchid more and new bits of holistic information are required. Neither the primeval amoebae type of cell nor the inorganic matter of which it is constructed, contain such highly specialized holistic information which is necessary to transform the alleged amoebae into say an anthropoid ape. Is it legitimate to assume that such incredible amounts of information arose spontaneously out of thin air, that is, by pure chance and natural selection, as Manfred Eigen maintains? Some scientifically credible postulate on such specialized information must be sought by science, if the riddle of macroevolution and indeed of biogenesis too, is to be credibly solved. Later sections of the present work will go into some of these problems.
Darwin observed very closely breeding experiments in domestic animals and noted that quite large change within species limits was possible and within relatively short time periods. He studied the various types of pigeons pigeon fanciers produced. He observed horse and cattle breeders doing the same. But up to Darwin's time breeders had believed that there were strict limits set to the distance such change could go and that the limits were those of the species itself.
Darwin (see foreword Note 6) unhappily for the whole post- Darwinian world of thought, proceeded to extrapolate his domestic breeding observations to include unlimited variation - in fact variations from the amoebae to man type . He taught that, just as controlled selection in domestic breeding over short periods of time could bring about the observed changes within a species, so natural selection and the survival of the fittest over long periods could bring about unlimited evolutionary change from one species to another - in short, from amoebae to man.
It is just at this point - unlimited variation - that Darwin extrapolated too far. For controlled breeding experiments and the accompanying selection certainly bring about species modification, that is, modification within a typological form. The horse could be modified from the Shetland Pony type to the shire horse by such selective breeding. But the product of this breeding work was always a horse. Pigeons could be modified from the wild wood pigeon type to exotic pouter types. Wild dogs can be similarly modified to the Pekingese, the terrier or the fox hound by variation and selective breeding. But they are all definitely dogs. No dog has ever been made to move into the cat family by selection, no horse has ever been modified towards the cow and no amphibian has ever been observed to tend towards becoming a reptile.
These facts are all well known. But in order to render the reasons for these phenomena clearer I wish to introduce an alternative nomenclature so as to prepare ourselves to think in terms of information theory in respect of evolutionary speciation problems. Changes within a species are usually referred to as examples of microevolution, as intraspecies changes, that is, the change from a wild dog to a Pekingese. However the change from a frog to a reptile or to a bird would be referred to as interspecies evolution or as macroevolution.
In the following pages I would like to introduce the term evolutive speciation for what has usually been referred to as macroevolution. The reason for this proposed change is simple: if a species moves upwards in respect of its quantity and quality of genetic information (genome) . then that type of speciation will be termed evolutive speciation The new species resulting will contain more specific holistic information than the species from which it was derived. If a monkey were to move up to a man, (evolutive speciation) it would require, to achieve this feat, an enormous amount of additional information to build for example the speech center and the specialized neural co-ordination between buccal cavity, lungs and vocal cords. so as to confer the ability of speech. This capacity of speech, grammatical speech, requires very extensive new information over that which the monkey possessed in his genetic code. Therefore the transfer from monkey to man would require quite incredible amounts of new and specialized holistic information just to wire the neural apparatus behind speech. In our terminology such upward speciation would, then, be termed evolutive speciation. Macroevolution is the older. less specifics term.
On the other hand, if a wood pigeon is changed by breeding into a pouter, or a wild dog into a Pekingese or a terrier, the general level of holistic species information remains about the same in both new strains or species, though the distribution and grouping of genetic information is certainly altered . This type of change involving only new groupings of already present information we will term static speciation, to indicate that the species level of genetic information has not been radically changed or raised, even though a new species may result. This term then will correspond to what is generally termed, albeit less specifically, microevolution.
Selective breeding or natural selection can both, then, certainly achieve static speciation. Evolutive speciation can, however, be achieved only, if new information required for the construction of new organs, which characterize higher biological order and necessitating increased information has been obtained. That is, evolution in the wider sense of the term - amoebae to man type - will occur only when new holistic information to finance new structures and organs has been obtained somewhere down the line. Since holistic information does not arise spontaneously, this problem of the information required for evolutive speciation must be squarely faced. Mere selection and mutation are here insufficient agents. Static speciation will occur where information redistribution can take place and will generally not alter a species substantially, though viability may be impaired. Regrouping of genetic information may produce a new species without raising the overall amount of genetic information involved in making up such a species. But evolutive speciation will only occur where basic new information is acquired. An earthworm would require quite a lot of new information if it were to develop a new eye to replace its old pigmented light sensitive spot. It would also need some more hydraulic information if it were to be in a position to develop a functional four chambered mammalian heart.
Obviously, then selective breeding in domestic animals and plants will be able to produce static or horizontal speciation. The total information content in such a process will remain substantially constant, although the internal grouping of such information will change. In such processes some information might even be lost without sacrificing the typology of the species. But evolutive or vertical speciation will take place only if additional new information for new organs and new structures to give new and more evolved species becomes attached to the new genetic apparatus in the new species.
In the following pages we propose to illustrate the basic mechanisms governing creativity in general, applying such later to biological problems. However, since the genetics of biology is an exceedingly complicated subject, it is often difficult to treat it pedagogically in a satisfactory manner. We propose, therefore, first of all to treat the subject of creativity and information storage and retrieval systems as applied to the synthesis of simple machines. We consider that it is justified to proceed in this way, since the biological cell, as well as the multicellular organism, are both, in the strict sense of the term, metabolic machines of extraordinary complexity. For this reason, we have thought it as well not to begin by tackling our subject of biological creativity and creation directly with the biological machine as our illustration. Instead we use a graduation in machine complexity first, to serve as an introduction to evolution in biological machinery. Thus, we begin with the simple machine, moving on then to the von Neumann machine. Then we proceed evolutively up towards the biological cell as a metabolic von Neumann machine. And finally we will examine creativity in the multicellular hierarchy of multicellular organisms.
We propose to take this pedagogic pathway for other reasons too: In the first place a simple machine is a teleonomic aggregate of matter which, however, does not reproduce and is therefore unlike and unequal to even the so-called simple biological cell, which does. The biological cell and the simple mechanical or electrical machine are classed as machines because they are both teleonomical. (See foreword Note (7)). But the simple mechanical or electrical machine does not reproduce itself. To render any machine self-reproducing will involve the addition of innumerable new component parts. Von Neumann, see foreword Note (1), worked out the theory and mathematics of man-made machines which could reproduce themselves. He found such machines to be so complex and to contain perforce so many new component parts over those of a simple non-reproducing machine, that they would theoretically become defective more quickly than they could be built and reproduce themselves. The more component parts a machine possesses the quicker it will be likely to go wrong. A point in complexity is soon reached at which such a machine, with so many component parts, will become defective before it can have worked at all.
Von Neumann recognized this practical difficulty and overcame it by introducing two new factors into such a self-reproducing machine. The first new factor that von Neumann introduced - by adding even more and suitable component parts - was the ability of his machine to detect and to diagnose the defective components in its own anatomy which are faulty. This extra diagnostic faculty makes the self-reproducing machine even more complex. The second factor which von Neumann introduced was that of the ability to repair the defective part automatically. The theory and mathematics behind these three abilities of the von Neumann machine are then expressed by self-diagnosis and self-repair of defective component parts, followed by self-reproduction. Such machines are termed, then, von Neumann machines.
The complexity of a man-made-machine possessing these three faculties over and above that of being a mere teleonomical machine, is, of course, phenomenal. In fact, such complexity resembles in many ways the complexity of a "simple biological cell", which also is a metabolic teleonomical machine which detects defects and repairs them and reproduces itself at the same time. In view of the theoretical likeness existing between the biological cell and the von Neumann machine I have chosen to examine creativity, biogenesis and evolutive speciation in the light of the simple machine and the von Neumann machine.
Extrapolating from work of this kind it is relatively easy to proceed to the nature of creativity and the time factor related to it. After this the final step can be taken to the problem of the accession of information in biology. A summary of this step at this stage of our thesis development would involve too many explanations which suffer under the process of summarizing. Thus the following text will have to be consulted for light on these further steps.
Theoretical Considerations
As we have seen in the foregoing text, the construction of all machines and teleonomic aggregates of matter - and even energy - requires an external source of information - a source which is not derivable from natural law. The question now arises as to the source of those necessary surprise effects.
Some scientists still believe that the necessity of assuming an extrinsic source of information may be obviated by the postulate that information in general, like mutations and entropy, arises spontaneously by stochastic processes. Manfred Eigen among other savants freely admit that the biological machine requires information of some sort - extrinsic or intrinsic - for its synthesis. The question of the source of such information loses its sting - and incidentally its embarrassment too, for materialists - if the necessity for such a source of information becomes self-canceling in that ubiquitous randomness generates information everywhere spontaneously. This self-cancellation is achieved by proposing that information pops up anywhere and spontaneously. Indeed, it is proposed that information, like entropy, increases ubiquitously and spontaneously within and according to the principles laid down by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
It will be remembered that the Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches that, although the total energy of the cosmos remains constant, the amount of energy available to do useful work in the cosmos is always diminishing. There are, of course, many ways of formulating this universal observation, but it really means that, all things being equal, that which is likely to occur will occur - which is of course the destructurization of all structure. This destructurization tendency would include the loss of the structure of information. Thus, according to the Second Law, one would not, on the surface of things, expect information and its unexpectedness to occur spontaneously coupled with the expectedness of natural law.
If, however, information, like entropy, really does arise stochastically, as Eigen maintains, then matter should, under the correct conditions, be able to undergo self-organization even to machines, just as Eigen maintains. This means that spontaneous generation and evolutive speciation, both of which require additional information to be hybridized with matter, should be feasible - which is just what Darwinians and other materialists wish to establish, even though no one has ever experimentally observed such processes. Manfred Eigen's famous hypercycles constitute an example of this wish to establish the self-organization of matter right up to biology. For only by establishing the feasibility of the self-organization of matter does Darwinian principle itself become feasible.
In order to resolve this question of the theoretical and experimental feasibility of self-organization of matter we must consider first of all the nature of potential information and then that of actual information.
Actual and Potential Information
First of all, it should be clearly kept in mind that, if information, like entropy, arises spontaneously, then it can under no circumstances be a true surprise effect. It would have to be in that case a non-surprise effect for it would be under any circumstances expected according to the Second Law. If information, like entropy were to arise stochastically, then the basis of Shannon and Wiener's definition of information would be fundamentally and thoroughly destroyed.
Secondly, there are two forms of information which must be strictly differentiated and kept apart. They are potential and actual information. First of all we must look at the term known as potential information and then compare it with the term actual information.
The term potential information, as we shall see, is certainly comparable to the concept of entropy, whereas the term actual information is the antipole, as it were, of entropy. Actual information could thus be compared to negentropy whereas potential information would correspond to entropy in many respects. The former can never be synthesized by stochastic processes, whereas the latter may. Let us explain this matter, which I have pointed out in detail in my book "Planender Geist gegen planlose Entwicklung" (Schwabe Verlag, Steinentorstrasse 13, CH_4000 Basel, Switzerland)3 In the above book I have shown, how effectively Manfred Eigen confuses the above two terms in order to arrive at his conclusion that information, like entropy, arises spontaneously and that therefore spontaneous abiogenesis is theoretically feasible. Eigen makes his point that "information" arises spontaneously by not specifying whether he means potential or actual information. He is correct, - if he means potential information -, but seriously in error when applying his reasoning to imply that actual information arises spontaneously - just like entropy.
The following reasoning will clarify this issue: If one bit of information represents one surprise effect, then the following considerations will demonstrate the surprising fact that this bit can, in fact, arise spontaneously. As an example let us take the synthesis of substance F from substance A via the steps B and D as shown below:
A ----> B ----> D ----> F \ \ \ C E G
Let us assume that for the synthesis of B or C from A two synthetic routes are equally likely , but that either B or C must be formed - and with exactly equal likelihood - from A on reaction. Normally, then, where many molecules of A are present, 50% B and 50% C would result from normal reaction. But where one molecule of A is present - and no more - then either B or C will be formed. Whether B or C is formed will depend on one bit of information or one surprise effect. For one cannot tell as an observer outside the system which will result. One bit of information tips the result of the synthesis either to B or to C. If , in fact, C is formed, then there can be no further chance of the synthetic chain ever reaching the desired substance F.
Our synthetical example here is by no means purely hypothetical, for during the synthesis of optically active isomers carrying just one asymmetric carbon atom, a similar situation will result. If just one molecule of a precursor of such an asymmetric substance were present in our system, whether the levo or the dextro molecule is formed will depend on similar informational considerations.
Similar situations will result in the further synthetical steps from B to either D or E, for either D or E will be formed with equal facility. To ensure that either D or E were formed would require one bit of information. But if E is formed there will be no further chance of F ever being achieved in the synthetic chain. Similarly for the steps leading from D to either F or G.
It is clear that the route from A to either B or C may be decided by a 50% chance occurrence, for both syntheses are equally likely on statistical grounds. If it is, then, it will be 50% possible to arrive at B (in many reactions) by random processes which will simulate the work of one bit of information or surprise effect per molecule. By the addition of one bit of extrinsic information (by guiding the synthesis externally) per unit, it would be possible to guide the synthesis from A to B with 100% certainty.
The point here is, that the correct route can be reached with a 50% certainty by chance, that is, by random processes. Consider, too, the fact that the next stage from B to either D or to E can also be reached by random processes. Each stage thus offers a 50% chance of reaching the required synthetic goal.
In proceeding from A to B then, there is a 50% chance of reaching B. In the next step from B to D there is also a 50% chance of being successful by random processes. The overall chance for the two steps will thus be 25% for reaching the goal. That is, each leg of the synthesis reduces the chance of the synthesis going the correct way by one half. That is, the more steps in a synthetic chain the less the chance of reaching the synthetic goal. Each step costs a 50% less chance. The longer the synthetic chain the less the chance of arriving where one wants to be.
We conclude then, that the results of single bits of information can be arrived at randomly. But each successive step in any cumulative synthesis of the type cited halves the likelihood of the following required synthetic stages being reached.
This brings with it the following consequences: When one considers the multistage syntheses involved say in the construction of an eye, a kidney or a heart - or even of a brain with its billions of teleonomically interconnected neuron nets, each step of which can go in the wrong direction - it will be clear that well nigh infinite numbers of separate synthetic steps are required to accomplish each synthetic goal. Thus, almost infinite numbers of synthetic steps can go wrong in such a sequence. There is an additional complication in such steps, which is often forgotten: - where asymmetric carbon atoms are involved in such syntheses, it is well known that dextro and levo configurations are synthesized with equal facility. If the levo molecule is "correct" then the dextro molecule will be "wrong" with exactly equal facility!
As a result of these considerations it will be clear that the chances of reaching any synthetic goal in a synthesis chain involving an almost infinite number of synthetic steps of the type under discussion will be almost infinitely small. For precisely this reason, to build a heart or a brain both involving asymmetric carbon atoms and large numbers of steps by randomly formed bits of information would require an almost infinite number of atoms, bits of information and an almost infinite amount of time. To supply the matter for the almost infinite number of synthetic pathways which went wrong, would require an almost infinite amount of matter too. According to the calculations of Sir Fred Hoyle (The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart and W inston, New York, 1984) our present space/time continuum could supply neither the time nor the atoms necessary for the synthesis of even one cell using random processes to do so.
A further aspect of information in all synthetic work must now be examined. In order to carry out successfully any multistage synthetic work the individual bits of information we have looked at must be integrated with one another holistically. That is, a total, holistic concept must be superimposed on to the separate individual bits of information (however formed) to produce an overall statistical synthetical informational picture.
To render this concept of holistically orchestrated information clearer, consider for a moment Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik". This masterpiece consists in the last analysis exclusively of the individual notes present on any piano or other keyboard. Each note corresponds, as it were, to one bit of information, i.e. to one surprise effect. For one note, in contrast to mere noise, corresponds to one surprisingly constant wavelength (and maybe its harmonics). But although notes make up the masterpiece known as "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" they alone certainly do not contain the whole essence of the work. To achieve "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" the constituting notes or surprise effects have to be holistically integrated with one another - or sequenced. The melody has to be imposed on to sequential groups of keyboard notes. Only then does Mozart's immortal work disentangle itself from the mere notes. Put another way, secondary actual sequential information has to be imposed on to the primary in formation of the separate individual notes. Bits of information in themselves will never build "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" - or a four chambered heart. To achieve this end, the bits have to be secondarily sequenced. Secondary information has to be superimposed on primary bits of information - just as in the Mozart masterpiece, so in constructing a four chambered heart.
Thus there are two levels or hierarchies of information which have to be taken carefully into account: the simple bit of information or surprise effect. This would be the primary information. And the secondary or orchestrated holistic information which is superimposed on to many bits of individual primary information. This produces a new hierarchical level of information - just as "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" was imposed upon ordinary keyboard notes to produce the masterpiece not present in its individual notes.
This situation is, in principle, no different from the A to F syntheses we have been considering in this section. The single chemical bondings leading to simple synthetic results or substances correspond to the primary information. The whole train of sequenced information producing an overall synthetic product or melody would answer to the secondary information. Single substances would be synthesized by primary information, whereas the synthesis of a four chambered heart, a fully wired brain or a speech center with its coupling to lungs, tongue and vocal cords would correspond to "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik".
Such being the case, we are now in a position to understand why Eigen's claim that "information" arises like entropy stochastically is indeed a dangerous half-truth. The basic "notes" of primary information can certainly so appear, but never the orchestrated bits of secondary information imposed onto the primary "notes". It is these secondary effects which carry out the synthesis of brains, hearts and kidneys, to say nothing of eyes and ears - and melodies.
The important question is therefore: where did such secondary orchestrated holistic information, information, which is necessary to synthesize concepts such as a biological cell, a species, or a melody arise? Mathematically it is not reasonable to attempt to conceive of this type of secondary information, information which is required to synthesize machines, melodies or von Neumann machines, to arise stochastically. This is why machines and von Neumann machines have never been known to arise spontaneously. Machines - and melodies - of all types need secondary, that is orchestrated information, both for their genesis, repair (together with associated defect diagnosis) and evolution. The reproduction of von Neumann machines is very especially dependent on such secondary information.
It is certainly no trivial matter, therefore, when we address ourselves to the question of the source of this highly conceptional secondary information. For it concerns the origin of all machines, including that of the von Neumann machine, be it purely mechanical or be it biological.
But before we leave this subject, there is one example we might perhaps cite to bring out even more decisively the difference between primary and secondary information. Non-orchestrated primary "information" (mere notes, surprise effects) could be produced by a cat randomly walking up and down on the keyboard of a piano. Each note struck would be a true surprise effect even though stochastically triggered. The piano is built to produce relatively constant surprise wavelengths on being suitably (even randomly) struck. But such a technique of producing primary non-orchestrated information would never produce "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik". Secondary information has to be imposed on to the primary information to achieve that high end.
This principle lying behind primary and secondary superimposed information is quite general. A half-toned picture, for example, is made up of black dots on white paper. Black dots on white paper evenly distributed are, strictly speaking, evenly distributed surprise effects. If, however, the black dots are shepherded into groups, a picture of yourself can arise. This is the basis not only of half-toned newspaper pictures but also the basis of television screen images, with the difference that lines instead of dots are used in groups to produce the TV picture. In each case the surprise effects of black dots or lines are used as the basic image carrying material. Information imposed on to this basic raw material gives the picture consisting of secondary information. The information does not arise in the notes or lines, but in their grouping secondarily.
What materialists among our eminent scientists are in fact maintaining is that the laws of inorganic matter are entirely responsible for all the teleonomic properties (i.e. pictures, melodies) of biology round about us. But it must be remembered that it is certainly not the paper and its laws which are responsible for the dots and their distribution on the paper. They were put there by agencies outside the paper. And agencies outside the paper took care of the grouping of the dots (or the lines in the case of television) to produce the pictures and images seen in our newspapers and on TV-screens. Similarly, in biology: it is not the inorganic matter alone which carries all life as we know it which made the basic bits of information or their groupings and sequencing, but surprise effect producing agencies not governed by natural law, which shepherd or group natural law - that is, sequence it.
One further illustration will suffice us to crystallize precisely the difference between potential and actual information. Again I risk turning my readers off by belaboring this matter to such an extent. But world leaders of Darwinian theory, who have as it were the run of the scientific literature which pours daily from the printing press (and which is denied their gainsayers) continually maintain that, since information arises spontaneously, therefore there is nothing unscientific about maintaining that spontaneous generation and evolutive speciation arise according to Darwinian theory from natural law. As we have already seen, this is a particularly vicious half-truth.
The illustration: if one takes a photographic plate say 5 cm X 5 cm and fills it with randomly distributed black dots, say one thousand of them, so that the plate appears slightly fogged by the thousand black dots, the paper will be half-toned. Each of the one thousand randomly distributed black dots is in itself a surprise effect, even though its distribution is random. The film or plate itself is white, so that a small area of black is a surprise effect in itself.
These one thousand random dots could be used to make, by suitable grouping, a picture of say yourself - the newspapers make their pictures in this way by simple grouping. But out of those very same identical one thousand dots one could by suitable alternative grouping make any pictures in the world - it might be a cow, a Bentley racing car, a boat, a piece of landscape, a tree, a wedding, a house, a motor cycle - or indeed whatever. The potential for making pictures out of the one thousand randomly distributed dots is infinite, for the image of a mowing machine, the picture of a car engine, a baby or an old man can all be built out of the potential of these one thousand dots. Although the randomly distributed dots show actually no picture (they resemble nothing so much as a slight but indescribable fog!), potentially they could build an infinite number of images. Although each dot represents one surprise effect, the conglomerate of random dots depicts no picture, gives therefore no actual picture or actual information. However, the dots, randomly distributed, do possess the capacity for infinite amounts of information - but communicate none. A random distribution of one thousand dots possesses therefore infinite potential information but no actual information. As we have seen, the single bits of information or dots can arise by chance processes, they can "fog" the paper. But the picture, which could be obtained from these random dots, - the cow, the old man or the mowing machine - cannot arise by random processes. This means that potential information (the random dots) can arise like entropy does, i.e. by random processes (cats walking on piano keyboards!), but actual information (the actual pictures obtained by grouping and shepherding the dots into specific shapes and images) never arises by random processes working on natural law. This is merely another way of saying that natural processes and randomness may well "fog the paper", but they never produce photographs - we are aware that clouds may simulate vaguely pictures - and the moon may remind us of a face!
Exactly the same considerations apply in the synthesis of the information on the DNA molecule. The various letters of the genetic code (guanine, thymine, cytosine and adenine) can certainly get randomly into position on the molecule, in fact they can as it were "fog the molecule", just as the random dots on the paper "fog" the paper. But the sequencing of the dots to code the information to make a heart, an eye, a kidney or a brain requires actual i.e. sequenced information, otherwise no genetic "picture" will ever appear. If DNA molecules appear from random chemical processes, there may well be all the "dots" on it, but in a random distribution, which merely "fogs the paper" and produces no genetic picture. The secondary information resulting from sequencing or shepherding the "dots" (= letters of the genetic code, the four bases) represents actual information. The potential information (= the random distribution of dots) may be infinite in the random distribution of genetic code letters and yet no organs such as kidneys or hearts will ever be produced, because such require "pictures" resulting from actual information. No picture ever results from "fogging the paper". Manfred Eigen and others in their support of the Darwinian line of thought, are, in fact, maintaining that random processes (potential information) produce increased negentropy and therefore increased information. They forget to specify that it is potential information which is thus produced and not actual information _ fogging the paper rather than photography!
If the 26 letters of the alphabet or the total keyboard notes on a piano are taken as our "dots", = basic bits of information, then mixing up the letters (or notes) randomly in a revolving drum will produce a maximum amount of potential information. For out of all the letters of the alphabet and of all the notes on the keyboard of a piano one could obtain potentially all Beethoven's or Mozart's masterpieces or all the masterpieces of Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis or of Mark Twain. But one little necessity for the obtaining of these two types of masterpieces (of music and of literature) may never be overlooked: it is the necessity of shepherding the potential information on to the primary, so as to obtain the "photograph" of actual information out of the "fogging" of potential information. Eigen and others, in their fervor for Darwinian materialistic doctrine, which insists on information arising spontaneously like entropy, maintain that no extrinsic shepherding of information is necessary in order to obtain the "images" (= photographic images) of biology.
Some further Details on the Actual Information Required for the Synthesis of von Neumann Machines
Some of the basic merits of von Neumann's work lie in the fact that he brought into clear relief the informational differences between a simple machine and the self-reproducing one. For the simple machine to become a self-reproducing one requires the addition of a vast number of new component parts to the simple machine. This fact brings with it the absolute necessary of vastly increased complexity. The increased complexity can be viewed, of course, as an increase, a vast increase, in negentropy . A consequence of this inflated negentropy is an increased liability to lose or shed complexity. That is, put crudely, for the machine to go wrong - because some of the component parts go awry or become defective quicker than the machine can be built, then there comes a stage in the increase of complexity at which the machine can never work. For it becomes defective quicker than it can be built.
Von Neumann found that building a self-reproducing machine involved so many component parts in the process of making it self-reproducing that it could theoretically never reach a functional state - it would become defective more quickly than the designers could build it. Therefore von Neumann came to the simple and yet highly complex conclusion, that, in order to obtain a self-reproducing machine, that machine had to be made even more complex! For it would have to have an inbuilt system of a) self-diagnosis of defective component parts and b) a self-repairing mechanism to repair the component parts found to be defective. a) and b) added enormously to the complexity of the already supercomplex machine. These facts mean that the complexity o f a mere self-reproducing machine is such that it would never suffice in itself - as a purely self-reproducing machine - to act as a functional machine. Such an exclusively self-reproducing machine (i.e. without self-diagnosis and self-repair), in it self could not be viable - without the additional factors of self-diagnosis and self-repair. That is why one does not find a biological cell which is self-reproducing but not self-diagnosing and self-repairing at the same time. The whole "treatment" i.e. self-reproduction, self-diagnosis and self-repair has to be an integral holistic mechanism, otherwise the Second Law catches up with a mere self-reproducing machine.
Thus, there are three dimensions in complexity necessary to render any "simple" machine self-reproducing. The first dimension in the complexity of component machine parts confers self-reproduction on the machine. But such a machine cannot, on theoretical grounds, be self-maintaining as we have seen. Self-reproduction has to be supplemented by a second dimension in number of component parts, namely that of self-diagnosis. This is followed by the third dimension (or order of complexity), that of self-repair. The three orders or dimensions of complexity in numbers of component machine parts are so incredibly high, that it is difficult to even conceive of such degrees of negentropy.
Von Neumann examined the mathematical problems involved in all these orders or dimensions of complexity and concluded that they were feasible and that such machines would function at least for a time. Our present knowledge of biology with its self-reproductive, self-diagnostic and self-reparative properties - all integral with one another have only gone to show how right von Neumann was in his mathematical treatment of these problems. For a thorough understanding of von Neumann's genius helps us today to comprehend the absolute genius behind all biological organisms - even to the separation in viruses of the self-reproductive capacity (for which the host cell supplies the metabolism) from the other two functions. The vast dimensions of additional complexity required for each horizon of activity and complexity excludes any likelihood whatever of any of their being arrived at by stochastic processes followed by selection after Darwinian modes of thought. And as we have already seen, until the super-complexity of self-reproduction has been achieved, no evolution at all according to the Darwinian scheme of mutation and selection is possible.
Many engineers will, I imagine, concur with these ideas on the nature of the von Neumann machine and the analogies to be found in the biological organism. Yet some engineers still pay at least lip service to the Darwinian scheme of things when applied to biogenesis and evolutive speciation. Such is the case even though they would never hesitate for a moment to reject the Darwinian scheme, if they were asked to apply it anywhere outside biology. Why? What difference of principle separates the two areas of any machine genesis and evolution - biological, mechanical or electronic?
The von Neumann Machine and the Phenomenon of Consciousness
At this juncture there is one proposition which we dare not leave untouched. It concerns the fact that no machine ever constructed or conceived of by man has ever shown the slightest provision for any sign of awareness, that is self-awareness or consciousness. Plenty of machines constructed by man today show signs of artificial intelligence, that is, they are able to profit from past experience and can therefore lay claim to intelligence. But self-awareness, self-consciousness is an entirely different phenomenon. No one to date has ever succeeded in even defining the conditions necessary to develop even artificial consciousness, let alone biological consciousness. In fact, it is not yet known exactly how to define what this property of consciousness exactly is.
Much work of a pioneering nature in this area was done by James T. Culbertson in the University of Illinois some years ago (cf. The Minds of Robots, Sense Data, Memory Images etc., Urbana, Illinois, University of Illinois 1963, See also A. E. Wilder-Smith, The Creation of Life, Master Books, San Diego, California, Third Printing 1981.) Culbertson; believed that suitably coupled or staggered nerve nets would automatically produce consciousness, but gave no concrete evidence for the experimental success of his theory. There seems to be, in fact, little clinching evidence at all that consciousness is irrevocably coupled to matter or even to nerve nets, but one can be dogmatic about very few aspects of the nature or mechanisms of consciousness today.
However, it must be remembered with respect to the matter of consciousness that the von Neumann machine known as the biological cell is by no means just a "simple von Neumann machine". It is a von Neumann machine endowed with an additional property not foreseen in any theoretical model developed by von Neumann, namely that of self-awareness or self-consciousness. Even the so-called "simple" biological cell shows some signs or evidence of some sort of self-awareness in its behavior towards certain external stimuli. The raw matter of which such simple cells are constructed shows certainly no experimental signs and is - apart from Alfred North Whitehead's and others' work to the contrary - not experimentally conscious. It must be remembered in this respect that there is some rather diffuse evidence to support the view that even single cells can display behavior apparently signaling hunger and the accompanying frustration. The view is, that, although behavior does not consist in consciousness itself, behavior may signal consciousness. A dog or horse when hungry express their consciousness of hunger by certain behavioral patterns. To watch a starving horse's behavior is an experience never to be forgotten. This evidence of the connect ion between behavior and consciousness is, of course, not clinching, for one could build a robot dog which barked if its tail were trodden upon. But no one would ever believe that the robot dog experienced the real pain of a tail being trodden upon, although its pure behavior might be mistaken as a signal of the consciousness of pain. Reports of signs of frustration shown by a hungry monocellular organism must therefore be treated with caution - for the amoebae so watched might be behaving like the robot dog when its tail was trodden upon!
In all discussion about consciousness, precepts of pain, hunger, joy or sorrow one has, therefore, to assume that, when an animal or a human writhes in agony, both are consciously experiencing the same kind of pain precept. Thomas Hobbes in the Leviathon made the point few philosophers since have risked making, namely: "Assuming the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man to be the thoughts and passions of another, whoever looketh into himself, and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear &c. and upon what grounds he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasion." (cf. Nicholas Humphrey, New Scientist, 19th. August 1982, p. 474).
When a pigeon appears to show insight (New Scientist, 29.3.84, p. 22) or a hungry amoebae apparent frustration Thomas Hobbes's statement must be remembered: we assume the parallel nature of precept across the species barriers from man to animals or other organisms and across the individual barriers between separate human beings. It is always an assumption with which we have to do - for consciousness must remain the secret of the individual experiencing it.
If one describes consciousness as Karl Popper describes his Worlds I, II and III, then consciousness could be designated as the area of precept which experiences pain, memory, joy, sorrow, hunger, satiation - in short all the areas of precept which experience the nervous impulses fed into them by the five senses of the nervous system. And these areas of precept must be coupled by memory so as to ensure individual continuity of experience. But, as we have already seen, inorganic matter could only function as an area of precept (as a memory machine, for example), if it first became hybridized with extrinsic surprise effects or information. So that information is a precondition of consciousness. Therefore, randomness cannot produce consciousness after Darwin. The same principle must, then, apply when inorganic matter is first organized teleonomically to produce a machine structure. Sufficient extrinsic information when hybridized with matter may produce the von Neumann machine, i.e. a structure more teleonomical than the simple machine. The question now then is, can increased information when hybridized with matter go onto produce the self-consciousness which we have been discussing? On the surface of things this assumption may appear to be correct, for more information produces in principle more negentropy even up to the von Neumann machine. May one extrapolate further and assume that sufficient organization of matter by sufficient hybridization with surprise effects produces the phenomenon of consciousness? On purely scientific grounds there would seem to be insufficient justification for regarding self-awareness as a mere property of sufficiently organized matter, for we have no experimental evidence for this step.
On the other hand, if a von Neumann machine such as an amoebae really does display primitive but genuine self-awareness (as some scientists maintain) and if (a big if) such an amoebae could be chemically synthesized (modern gene technique is still a very, very long way away from such a possibility) then consciousness would have been produced by organizing matter with the help of information hybridization. This idea of organized matter as a source of consciousness is not so materialistic as some ma y imagine. For, if in other dimensions in which matter and time as we know them may not exist (see chapter on black holes, chapter IV pp. 66_78) then perhaps some sort of timeless "super-matter", if suitably organized by the same information hybridization might perhaps be capable of generating and supporting consciousness. But this is pure speculation, of course. But for readers who are not atheists or materialists, but believe in the reality of the transcendent, this might help in coping with the problem of the alleged consciousness of immaterial beings such as angels, who are assumed to be - with God and demons - conscious beings (see chapter on dimension theory and black holes, loc. cit.).
We now leave speculations of the above kind and return to a summary of our more experimental conclusions to date: to account for the existence of biological machines, such as cells or organisms, which are able to self-diagnose errors, self-repair the same and then self-reproduce from component parts available in the environment by self-assembly of such. Such machines are, into the bargain, self-conscious. Up to consciousness (and maybe including consciousness) all these attributes require the collaboration of actual information in almost infinite quantities. To propose, therefore, that such masterpieces of teleonomy arose by leaving their component parts to the influence of randomness and of long time periods followed by natural selection, turns out to be a simply monstrous affront to all informational science and indeed to common sense. Such a Darwinian ideology (for it is little else than an ideology and certainly not a science) insults the human computing system. But just about the last straw in this affront and insult to human intelligence is supplied when the suggestion is made that biological consciousness too arose in the same way.
Some may consider the above language too strong. It will be therefore in order to give one or two quotations from accredited evolutionists on the factuality of their doctrines on origins and evolution, which they themselves teach as facts.
1."That evolution, so stated, is an indisputable fact, is accepted by all but one or two of those who are accredited experts in the study of biology of the fact of organic evolution there can at the present day be no reasonable doubt; the evidences for it are so overwhelming that those who reject it can only be the victims of ignorance or of prejudice." (M. J. Kenny, Teach yourself Evolution, 1966, pp. 1 and 159, cited from "The rise of the Evolution Fraud", M. Bowden, Sovereign Publications, P . O. Box 88, Bromley, Kent, BR2 9PF, England, 1982).
2. "Darwin... finally and definitely established evolution as a fact." (George Gaylord Simpson, cited from M Bowden, loc. cit. p. 214).
3."Only ignorance, neglect of truth, or prejudice could be the excuse for those who in the present state of knowledge without discovering new facts in the laboratory or in the field, seek to impugn the scientific evidence for evolution." (Sir Gavin de Beer;, A Handbook of Evolution, British Museum (Natural History), 2nd Edition, (1958).
4."The first point to make about Darwin's theory is that it is no longer a theory but a fact. No serious scientist would deny the fact that evolution has occurred, just as he would not deny the earth goes round the sun all scientists agree that evolution is a fact there is absolutely no disagreement." (Issues in Evolution, 3 of Evolution after Darwin, Sol Tax Editor, Chicago University Press, 1960).
5."Today, a century after the publication of the Origin, Darwin's great discovery, the universal principle of natural selection, is firmly and finally established as the sole agency of major evolutionary change." (Introduction to the Mentor edition of the Origin of Species, Mentor, New York, N. Y.). After all the above dogmatism and denigration of those who beg to differ on the subject of the origin of the von Neumann machine known as the biological cell, it really is difficult to account for such authors' claim to scientific respect. For the actual scientific facts are perfectly clear and they do not establish but rather demolish Darwinian evolution. What are then the real facts:
1.that there is a gradation of complexity from inorganic matter to "simple" viruses, upwards to pro- and eukaryotic cells, from monocellular organisms up to multicellular organisms, from simple plants up to complex ones. The same gradation obtains for animals up to homo sapiens. But why do the evolutionists infer from this perfectly lucid gradation in complexity that the simpler forms of this gradation developed spontaneously into complexer forms simply from the fact of gradation! Given gradation in complexity by no means leads to the conclusion that the complexity developed gradually by mutation and selection as Darwin surmised. The fossil record tells us unmistakably that complexity arose suddenly and early. Darwin's surmises are certainly not facts and to impute ignorance and prejudice to those who point out this difference is neither scientific nor gentlemanly. Going back even earlier, Darwin's primeval soup in a pond is geologically the purest myth.
2.In the present state of knowledge it would be more correct to maintain that Darwinian theory is a fiction and certainly not a fact. The present state of knowledge concerning the structure of the cell and its relationship to information theory exposes Darwinism for what it is _ one huge error based on lack of knowledge of information theory and of the fossil record!
3.In David Hume's days it was not possible to maintain with absolute certainty that the biological cell was a true but almost infinitely complex machine and therefore it was not possible then to refute him. Today this is no longer the case, for those who know their biology recognize that the biological cell is a true but almost infinitely complex machine and that machines are synthesized by the hybridization of surprise effects or bits of information (not natural law) with matter. Thus the spontaneous generation of cells from stochastic phenomena and their evolutive speciation up to man by the same Darwinian mechanism is, in today's state of knowledge, little less than pure nonsense. It belongs into the same category as an assertion would that car engines, von Neumann machines or computers arise by chance followed by selection.
4.To state that evolution up to man from inorganic components by chance and selection is a fact, is today frankly unconscionable. For how can any real scientist ever maintain that self-awareness - one of the most developed attributes of man - developed by Darwinian mechanisms when no one knows even of what self-awareness consists or whence it came? The above sample of statements on evolution as a fact and to the effect that all who dissent are prejudiced and ignorant shows that biology is today living in a period of the sheer travesty of facts.
Accounting for the Origin of Information - Coupled with Dimension Theory
Without the interaction of actual, holistic information (= surprise effects not derivable for natural law, which latter is known and therefore not of surprise value) with matter, there is, then, no accounting for the genesis of any teleonomic aggregates (machine structures) of matter. This fact of life applies to all types of machines, be they purely mechanical, electronic or biological metabolic machines. The basic principle remains the same for all types of machines in that they are all teleonomic. The hybridization of extrinsic, actual, holistic information with non-teleonomic raw matter is basic to all the types of machines mentioned.
Before abiogenesis took place obviously non-teleonomic raw matter could not generate spontaneously surprise effects of the teleonomic type required for any machine structure. This principle accounts for the fact that neither mechanical, electronic nor biological metabolic machines have ever been observed to arise spontaneously in actual practice i.e. without the addition of extrinsic information and its hybridization with matter.
And yet we still find all over the world recognized scientists maintaining that life and biological cells will arise spontaneously all over the material universe where time enough is given and where conditions of temperature and water content etc. are favorable. This is the burden of the beliefs published on the widest possible scale by celebrities such as Carl Sagan, Professor C. Ponnamperuma (U. of Maryland), A. I. Oparin etc. among many others. Such Darwinians propagate the discipline of exobiology and search for life all over the universe "because life will and must arise spontaneously wherever the external and chemical conditions for it are favorable." It was at the prompting of such men that the Viking laboratories were sent to Mars. For if their thesis were correct such an old planet (in their view) must at least show the beginnings of chemical evolution in the production of suitable organic raw material for life. Perhaps, they maintained, the first primitive cells on Mars have already arisen from these organic chemical precursors. Great was the disappointment when the laboratory results came through - and showed neither a trace of organic matter nor a trace of life in Martian soil. Such is the power of ideology, however, that Darwinians are still trying to reinterpret this perfectly clear reality as meaning that both organic materials and life may be present! If experiment does not suit your ideology, then so much the worse for the experiment! Deny your experimental results and let your theories stand! But why spend billions of dollars of taxpayers money to send two laboratories to Mars if you have not the slightest intention of modifying your theories in the light of this expensive experiment? Presumably because it is other peoples' money! Here modern day scientists do not differ much in principle from Priestley (Dr. Phlogiston, as he was known to the day of his death.).
Darwinians and others rightly maintain, however, that if actual information (as opposed to potential information) really is necessary as a prerequisite for abiogenesis and evolutive speciation, then the scientist should be in a position to name a scientifically credible source of such information. It is, it goes without saying, completely useless to offer such Darwinians the possibility of God being such a source of information. For, after all, He is known as the Logos, or the source of the information known as the Word or concept. But Darwinian ideology took on so rapidly and thoroughly among scientists precisely because it obviated the necessity of any and all appeals to God as a source of any biological or other activity. This is the reason why Creationism, especially the term "scientific creationism" is such an abomination in the eyes of the majority of scientists today. For 150 years now (since Darwin) the appeal to Divinity for any scientific reason has been disallowed in all materialistic science - so think and teach the consequential Darwinians - amongst themselves at least. The very name "scientific creationism" implies a Creator as source of the information for all biology and the structure and maintenance of the universe. For this very reason the term "scientific creationism" is anathema and totally unacceptable in most scientific circles. In fact, it is a source of universal and utter derision including undesirable emotion in even otherwise staid academic circles, for it fails to show any understanding on the creationist's part of the false ideological position in which Darwinians find themselves, namely that natural law is the exclusive source of all information, structure and biology!
Natural law is an axiom, it is maintained, and has therefore always existed and needs for this reason no Creator to account for it. The "scientific creationists" do not seem to have understood the perfectly clear position of their opponents, namely that it is today considered to be an absolute anachronism to introduce any idea of a Creator into today's science. For the aim of science since Darwin has been to remove all imponderables (i.e. surprise effects), such as God, from all laboratory based science. For this reason the term "scientific creationism" must, in the present climate of opinion, act like the proverbial red flag to a bull when offered as a credible alternative to Darwinians, Marxists and others.
Nevertheless, the average theist (the Christian, the Jew or the Muslim) will probably support the foregoing text as far as it goes. For the representatives of the three faiths mentioned seem to understand that an extrinsic and holistic source of information (Logos?) is a prerequisite for generating any machine - like biology - and for any raw matter with its mathematical preconditions. They all will therefore understand that an intelligent Godhead must have supplied this scientific necessity by delivering the actual information, which is a prerequisite for both aspects (organic and inorganic) of the creation.
The representatives of these three faiths may even go further in maintaining that their God is eternal, that is outside the space-time continuum (or transcends it). They may say that, if He is eternal, his thought life will also be eternal too and therefore not conditioned or restricted by the time factor which governs and limits all our thoughts and activities.
Christians, Jews and Muslims will often go even a stage still further and maintain that the thoughts of God being eternal, and biology and matter being an expression of God's thoughts, both will have been conceived, not in the dimension of time, but in the dimension of timelessness, that is, in eternity. Such, therefore, reject evolutionism (believing Muslims reject Darwin just as believing Jews and Christians are inclined to), for evolution ascribes the structure of man and of all biology to evolution which took place strictly in time. That is, the universe and biology are strictly products of time. Long time periods are a sine qua non for all true Darwinians, who ascribe evolution and its increasing complexity to time. That is, they regard time and matter as the basic raw materials for evolution. The three faiths mentioned above believe eternity and eternal thought supplement space/time with information in creation. For the evolutionist the concept of man is a concept of time, starting in time, conditioned by time and ending in time. The Jew, the Christian and the Muslim believe that the concept of man, of biology and of the creation in general is a concept of eternity, starting there, conditioned there and ending there.
This means that for such faiths the space/time continuum is not the originator of all we see, but dimensions outside the space/time continuum are. Now, years ago, before physics had developed as it has done today, talk like this would have been considered strictly untenable and unscientific. But not so today. This matter concerning the concept of dimension theory we must look at in one moment, but there is one other problem that must be looked into, before we go into the question of dimensions.
What shall we as scientists do about the above kind of concepts arising outside the space/time continuum? Is there any ring of truth about them? Obviously we need to find a reasonable scientifically tenable explanation as to any dimension where the well nigh infinite actual information required for the construction and functioning of even the simplest cell might originate.
As far as we can see in the known universe there is no specific location where almost infinite information of the type we need could possibly originate. We write this in spite of Fred Hoyle's book (The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart and Winston , New York, 1983) in which he categorically states that life did not and indeed could not originate on earth at all. Natural law does not suffice, intelligence is, for him, needed. Hoyle regards the whole idea that biology arose on the earth and in time as a left-over from medieval thought, which allegedly believed that the earth was not only the geographical center of the universe but also its biological center, too.
Hoyle then goes on to suggest that out in the far galaxies of the universe there exist what might be termed gene or information factories which shed genes all around them. These genes would be of approximately the size required to allow them to be transported on certain radiation wave lengths throughout the universe. According to Hoyle some of these genes thus reached the earth and account for certain hitherto mysterious outbreaks of epidemics which afflict us here from time to time. These DNA or RNA strands of "adventitious information" are supposed to act pathogenetically in the same way that certain viruses do. Hoyle and others have searched for experimental evidence for such information strands in the stratosphere, where some structures of this type have been reported. But whether they came up from the earth or down from outer space (if one can speak in terms of "up" or "down" in this context) is still a moot point.
On earth, once safely arrived here from outer space, these strands of information are supposed by Hoyle to have assembled themselves progressively into higher and higher organisms until the present day organisms we see on earth were built up. Evolution, then, according to Hoyle, did not occur by random processes on earth but rather by the building up of preformed information from outer space over the course of millions of years.
Hoyle cites as an example of this spontaneous building up of information the development of resistance to certain antibiotics by the inclusion of freely occurring plasmids into micro-organisms which supply the latter with the information necessary to achieve resistance to certain chemotherapeutical medicaments.
Now all this speculation on the part of Sir Fred is most interesting in so far as it is a tacit recognition of the fact that an evolutionary theory which presupposes the gradual development of holistic actual information from processes of natural law is totally sterile mathematically, chemically and from the principles of information theory. But without experimental evidence as to the whereabouts of these "gene factories" and without evidence of an experimental sort as to their structure, Hoyle's theories are just as sterile as evolution itself. For, if natural law here on earth cannot develop surprise effects producing intelligence, how can we expect to solve the problem of the origin of actual information by just pushing it millions of light years away from us into outer space? We should have to change the natural laws of outer space into laws which were not laws - but pure surprise effects and therefore not natural laws at all, i.e. intelligence. So he believes too, for he speaks a great deal about the "intelligent universe". Natural law does not, in our experience, produce intelligence _ although it may well serve as a carrier of intelligence, as in the human brain or in certain types of artificially intelligent machines. Just by projecting matter far enough into outer space and galaxies does not make it a producer of gene strands packed full of surprise effects. Hoyle offers little explanation of this aspect of the problem of the origin of his proposed and postulated intelligence.
But why does Hoyle go to all these speculative extremes? Simply because there is no way of accounting for the machinery and the information of biology (and the mathematics of matter) by mere natural law. The origin of information is the great problem, for it is not derived from natural law though natural law can serve as its carrier. Why, having recognized this problem, just push it out into outer space and hope that that manoeuvre alone will solve the problem with no further effort?
We now return to the subject of dimension theory itself. The materialists have long maintained that the space/time continuum in which we live, the here and now of our existence, is the only reality or dimension which exists. For the reasons given above we have no means of accounting for the origin of the information, which, of course, is a scientific necessity, if we are ever going to account for the information and machinery of biology. For space/time is governed strictly by the natural law we have studied here in our space/time continuum. For this reason space/time alone without the help of extrinsic surprise effects - cannot generate life or any sort of other machinery spontaneously.
What then might the solution to this problem of the origin of information be? One thing is today absolutely certain: it is not the Darwinian one supported by practically all scientists today, including Nobel Laureates such as Manfred Eigen. For Darwinians still believe that the superbly metabolic complex machinery of biology arises stochastically and is then merely sorted by natural selection. Many of the more thoughtful scientists disregard the raucous propaganda which dominates some scientific literature today and maintain, that in view of this dilemma, the only alternative to Darwinian theory lies in the doctrine of special creation. But, for the pure materialist such a thought is simply unthinkable. For there is no dimension in which an y such intelligence could exist. The here and now, the space/time continuum, is all there is. And God surely does not inhabit time/space as we do, or he would be as mortal as we are. The very idea is unthinkable in all its aspects! For we are just not capable of thinking about anything eternal or omnipotent or omnipresent or omniscient, for all such attributes are infinite and our computer governing our thought processes is definitely finite, for which reason it cannot handle such concepts reasonably. We just cannot think logically about any God-originator of infinity, infinite thought, power or prescience. We are therefore in no position to test any such concepts in our finite laboratory facilities - or indeed in our finite minds either. Therefore, argues the materialist, the whole idea of any special creation by an infinite God is simply and clearly unthinkable. It is therefore unfit for any scientist even to consider such. Such ideas of infinite thought must be meaningless, for it would totally exceed the capacity of all our thought processes.
What, then, might be the solution to this total impasse? Certainly not the Darwinian answer. For even with our finite minds and thought processes we can see that to be untenable on purely scientific grounds. It seems to me that there is at the very least one viable and scientifically tenable alternative to the Darwinian one - and therefore to the purely materialistic postulate. It is as follows:
Since we today know for certain (in contradistinction to knowledge at the time of Darwin) that there are at least 11 dimensions of reality - including our reality of space and time - and that each dimension is separated from all others by an "event horizon" (sic) _ there are plenty of other realities besides our own which exist and with which we can have no direct contact. We can know little about such other realities or dimensions except that the laws of time and space are not valid or function al in them. Time, for example, need not flow there as it does in the here and now. The question we must ask ourselves is: is it conceivable that any such other dimension could house sources of surprise effects - i.e. effects outside natural law such as we know it - of which the synthesis of biology and other phenomena requiring information stands in need? For it must be remembered, in support of this concept, that the total properties of such extra-dimensions are apparently all surprise effects in that such are not dependent on any natural law as we know it.
The term "event horizon" signifies that one such dimension is totally separated from others. Indeed they are so separated, so "hermetically sealed off" from others, that one dimension thus separated can know nothing of its "neighbor". The meaning of this fact is that information cannot normally pass from one reality to another - except under very special circumstances or under the influence of special surprise effects! Such dimensions must be replete with surprise effects.
Some literature on this subject may be read in the work carried out by Professor Paul Davies: see "The 11 Dimensions of Reality", The New Scientist, 9th February 1984, pp. 31_33; See also "Dimension Theory", Science, 1/6/84, p. 971.
It will be necessary now to show the nature of such dimensions and how they transcend our space/time continuum. The problem of how physicists study them indirectly - because no direct information about them can be obtained from them - must also be considered. Since the teaching of dimension theory in ordinary university classes and schools (it is still taught, of course, in some physics classes) was abandoned at the beginning of this century (the curriculum came to be too crowded to include such esoteric subjects) pupils and students have been nurtured intellectually almost entirely on the dimension of space/time. The consequence is, that the minds of intellectuals have been fed only on plain materialism, space and time. Nothing else in their thinking can exist. Nothing else is conceivable to the unstocked mind. Most find it extremely difficult to conceive - scientifically at least - of anything but the here and now of space and time.
In the following text we hope to overcome some of these difficulties by supplying further well founded scientific facts about these and related subjects. In the pursuit of this course of study it will be necessary to study the nature of black holes and the theory of event horizons which an understanding of these phenomena demands. Then we shall be in a better position to couple dimension theory with information theory in our search for a viable alternative to materialistic Darwinian theory of origin and evolution or evolutive speciation. In this manner we hope to be able to demonstrate a viable alternative to Darwinian theory. To achieve this purpose we need first of all to demonstrate an alternative supply of actual holistic information suitable to account for the almost infinite information needed to synthesize biology and its evolutive speciation. For we have to account for information to build the super and conscious von Neumann machine of biology. This problem will comprise the subject matter of Part II of the present book.
1.Manfred Eigen, Ruthild Winkler, Das Spiel, Naturgesetze steuern den Zufall, Piper & Co.,Verlag, Munchen/Zurich, 1975, pp. 1-401. (Natural Law regulates Chance). 2.loc. cit. pp. 260-265.
3.Shannon, C.E., and Weaver, W., The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, Urbana/Chicago/London 1971. Eigen, M. and Winkler R., Ludus vitalis, Mannheimer Forum, 73/74, Studienreihe Boehringer, Mannheim 1973. Eigen, M., Selforganisation of Matter and the Evolution of Biological Macromolecules, Naturwissenschaften 58 (S. 465-522) 1971. Weizsacker, C. F. von, Information and Evolution, P. 531 in Informatik, Herausgeber, Joachim-Hermann Scharf, Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1972. Monod, J., Zufall und Notu~endigkeit, R. Piper Verlag, Munchen 1971 Wilder-Smith, A E., Planender Geist gegen planlose Entwicklung, Schwabe Verlag, Steinentorstrasse 13, CH - 4000 Basel, Switzerland.
4.Sir Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1984.
5.Crick, Francis, The Origin of the Genetic Code,J. Mol. Biol., 38, 367-79 Woese C., On the Origin of the Genetic Code, Proc. Natl. Academy Sci., 1965, 54, 1546-52, 1965.
6.von Neumann. J., Theory of Self Reproducing Automata, 1966, Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana, USA.
7.Wheeler, J.A., Genesis and Obseruership, Fundamental Prooiems in the Special Sciences, eds. R.E. Butts and K.J. Hintikks: Reidel, 1977). -Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? p. 38, Davies P., loc. cit. (emphasis added by A.E.W-S.).See also Davies Paul, God and the New Physics, Penguin Books, 1983, pp. 39, 75-87.
8.Culbertson, James T., The Minds of Robots, Sense Data Memory Images, Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana 1963, cf. Wilder-Smith A. E., The Creation of Life, Master Books, San Diego, California, Third Printing, 1981.
9.Lawden, D.F., Are Robots Conscious? The New Sclentist, Sept. 4th., 1969, pp. 476-77. Other references here. Overman Richard, Evolution and the Christian Doctrine of Creation, (publisher lacking).
10.Wilder-Smith, A E., Creation of Life, loc. cit. of chapter 8 on Artificial Consciousness, p. 165. TWFT Publishers, P.O. Box 8000, Costa Mesa, Ca. 92628. 11.Popper, Karl, The Unended Quest, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., Glasgow, U.K., 1974, p. 180 etc.
12.Ponnamperuma, C., Lemmon R.M., Mariner R., Calvin M., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sciences USA, 49, 737. cf. Dose K. Rauchfuss, Chemische Evolution und der Ursprung lebender Systeme, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH., Stuttgart, 1975, 107. Oparin, A I., Der Ursprung des Lebens, Moskau, 1924. Sagan, Carl, Intelligent Life in the Universe, Picador by Pan Books Ltd., London, 1977. Huygens, C., New Conjectures concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their Inhabitants and Productions, cited by Carl Sagan In Intelligent Life in the Universe, p . 214. Crick, F. and Orgel L.E., Directed Panspermia, Icarus, 1973, 19, 341-346.
13.The Viking Mission to Mars, Time Magazine, Viking: the first Signs of Life, 1976, 9th. August, p. 48. Sagan, Carl, Ultra Violet Selection Pressure on the Earliest Organisms, J. Theoretical Biology, 1973, 39, 195-200.
14.Creationists in Court, Genesis goes on Trial, Christopher Joyce, New Sclentist, llth. Dec. 1986, p. 46. Creationism and 72 Nobel Laureates: Laureates fight back against Creationists. New Scientist, 28th. August 1986, p. 13. Crick, Francis, Life is Chemistry and Physics writ large, Arthur Peacock, Publisher J.M. Dent., review in New Scientist, 23rd. October 1986, p.60. cf. Stephen Jay Gould, New Scientist 12.3.87, pp. 32-36 calls creationists "baddies" to impute ridicule to them.
15.Popper, K. Sir and Eccles J. Slr, The Self and Its Brain, Springer Verlag, International 1985.