Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

The kind of order found in crystals is repetition of simple patterns, whereas the kind of order found in living things is highly complex and nonrepetitive. The order found in the biochemical components of the bodies of living things is not only highly complex, but very specific. This specified complexity has a high information content, which allows the biochemical components to perform specific functions that contribute to the survival of the organism. Compare the letter sequences ABABAB AB, RXZPRK LDMW, and THE BIG RED HOUSE. The first sequence is ordered, but it is not complex and therefore is not informative. Crystals are like this. The second sequence is complex, but it is also not informative. But the third sequence is both complex and informative. The sequence of letters encodes information that allows the sentence to perform a specific communication function. This property can be called “specified complexity.” Biological complexity of the kind we are talking about in proteins and other molecules in cells is specified complexity— it is complexity that specifies a function (like protein coding ability of DNA). Such patterns of complexity are thus different from the simple repetitive patterns that arise in the crystallization process (Meyer 1998, p. 134).

Prigogine proposed that self-reproducing organisms could arise from reacting chemicals brought together in the convection currents of thermal baths, far from thermal equilibrium. This is somewhat different from the crystal formation process, which involves phase transitions at or near thermal equilibrium. Bradley (1998, p. 42) nevertheless concludes that although the ordered behavior of the chemicals in Prigogine’s systems is more complex than that observed when the systems are at thermal equilibrium, the order is still “more the type of order that we see in crystals, with little resemblance to the type of complexity that is seen in biopolymers.” And whatever ordering is observed can be attributed to the complex design of the experimental apparatus. Meyer (1998, p. 136), citing the work of Walton (1977), says, “even the self-organization produced in Prigogine-like convection currents does not exceed the organization or information represented by the experimental apparatus used to create the currents.”

Manfred Eigen has proposed that groups of interacting chemicals called “hypercycles” could be a step toward self-reproducing organisms (Eigen and Schuster 1977, 1978a, 1978b). But John Maynard-Smith (1979) and Freeman Dyson (1985) have exposed some flaws in this proposal. “They show, first,” says Meyer (1998, p. 136), “that Eigen’s hypercycles presuppose a large initial contribution in the form of a long RNA molecule and some forty specific proteins. More significantly, they show that because hypercycles lack an error-free mechanism of self-replication, they become susceptible to various error catastrophes that ultimately diminish, not increase, the information content of the system over time.”

Stuart Kauffman of the Sante Fe Institute has tried another approach to complexity and self-organization. He defines “life” as a closed network of catalyzed chemical reactions that reproduce each molecule in the network. No single molecule is engaged in self-replication. But he asserts that if you have a system of at least a million proteinlike molecules, the odds are that each one will catalzye the formation of another molecule in the system. Therefore the system as a whole replicates. When the system reaches a certain state, it supposedly undergoes a phase transition, introducing a new level of complexity for the whole system. But Kauffman’s concept is based purely on computer models with little relevance to real life systems of reacting chemicals (Bradley 1998, p. 44).

First of all, Kaufmann’s estimate of a million molecules is too low for each kind of molecule to catalyze the formation of another kind of molecule in the system. But even if a million kinds of molecules is enough, the odds that a particular catalyzing molecule will be near the correct chemical ingredients needed to produce another molecule are remote (Bradley 1998, p. 45).

Futhermore, Kaufmann’s computer models do not adequately take into account the exothermic nature of the formation of biopolymers— the reactions require energy from the system and would quickly deplete it, leaving the system “dead.” Kaufmann proposes that energy-producing reactions in the system could compensate for the energy consumed in the formation of biopolymers. But Bradley (1998, p. 45) points out that these reactions will also require that certain molecules be in the right places at the right times, in order to participate in the reactions. How all this is supposed to happen is not satisfactorily explained in Kauffman’s models. Bradley (1998, p. 45) adds: “Dehydration and condensation onto substrates, his other two possible solutions to the thermodynamic problems, also further complicate the logistics of allowing all of these 1,000,000 molecules to be organized into a system in which all catalysts are rightly positioned relative to reactants to provide their catalytic function.” In other words, Kauffman’s system does not realistically account for getting all the molecular elements arranged in the proper places for all the needed catalytic and energy-producing reactions to take place. In a computer this may not matter, but in real life it does.

The Rna World

The biggest problem in all origin-of-life scenarios remains explaining in a detailed way the origin of the first DNA replication system found in modern cells. Trying to explain how the DNA replication system arose directly from molecular subunits has proved so difficult that scientists have given up trying. They have concluded that there must have been simpler precursors to the DNA system. Today, many scientists are concentrating their efforts on a replication system based on RNA, which plays a subordinate role in today’s cellular reproduction processes. They imagine in the earth’s early history an “RNA world” that existed before the DNA world. RNA is a nucleic acid, and it has the ability, under certain circumstances, to replicate itself. Proteins cannot replicate themselves without the help of enzymes that catalyze the replication process. So RNA offers a possible solution to this problem. Perhaps a system of replicating RNA molecules could eventually start catalyzing the replication of proteins, the building blocks of an organism.

The main problem with the RNA world is that scientists have not given a satisfactory explanation of how RNA could spontaneously form. Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel, two prominent RNA researchers, have admitted that it is difficult to see how RNA could have self-organized in the earth’s early environment. The two primary subunits of RNA—nucleic acids and sugars—tend to repel each other. Joyce and Orgel (1993, p. 13) called the idea that RNA could self-organize “unrealistic in light of our current understanding of prebiotic chemistry” and spoke of “the myth of a self-replicating RNA molecule that arose de novo from a soup of random polynucleotides.” They also called attention to the primary paradox of origin-of-life theories: “Without evolution it appears unlikely that a self-replicating ribozyme [RNA] could arise, but without some form of self-replication there is no way to conduct an evolutionary search for the first, primitive self-replicating ribozyme.” It should also be kept in mind that RNA can self-replicate only under carefully controlled laboratory conditions not easily duplicated in the early history of the earth. Another problem is that there are many kinds of RNA molecules, and not all of them catalyze their own self-replication. Behe (1996, p. 172) observes: “The miracle that produced chemically intact RNA would not be enough. Since the vast majority of RNAs do not have useful catalytic properties, a second miraculous coincidence would be needed to get just the right chemically intact RNA.”