Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Maxwell’s Demonic Doorman
Post 100.September 22, 2019
Body, Soul, and Information
The Program in the Machine
Paul Davies picks-up where Quantum theorist Erwin Schrodinger left-off 77 years ago in his lecture series on the perennial question : What Is Life? As indicated by the subtitle, his answer is based on Claude Shannon’s technological Information Theory, developed around the same time as those physical & biological lectures on Life. According to Davies, mundane Information is the commonality between Physics, Biology and Technology. So, his scientific answer to the topical question is more complex than the traditional religious and philosophical proposals of a personal Spirit or Soul injected at birth. He elaborates, “the new physics is not simply a matter of an additional type of force – a ‘life force’ – but something altogether more subtle, something that interweaves matter and information, wholes and parts, simplicity and complexity.”
The various time-honored theories of Life basically assumed that humans were like lumps of clay, animated by an additional spiritual essence, sometimes referred to as a Daemon, Spirit or Soul. As technology advanced over the years though, and life seemed less mysterious, humans were imagined as animals or machines, except for a supplementary enhancement (Mind) that endowed them with rational thought. So both Life and Mind were imagined as invisible immaterial animating and enlightening powers, sometimes called elan vital (Life Force). But today, “many scientists prefer to think of life as a process rather than a thing”. For example, an egg or sperm is animated, but cannot survive apart from the parent until after the multi-step construction of a multi-part body. And the exact moment of death cannot be determined by reference to a single factor, such as a Soul departing the body. Living clay is a complex operating system, not flesh plus supernatural spirit, but matter plus mundane2EnFormAction.
In his treatment of DNA’s role in life, Davies notes that the “life plan” is “in short, chemistry plus information.” He quotes a bio-chemist Bernd-Olaf Kuppers,“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of information.” And he summarizes his point that “LIFE = MATTER + INFORMATION”. We all know what matter is because we experience it with our senses. However, “information . . . is an abstract concept, deriving ultimately from human communication.” Hence, we know that Information exists only by inference from observing and interacting with other conscious beings. Information is normally experienced via physical media (sound, touch, vision), but those are merely the containers, not the content. The medium is not the message.
Since many people are not clear on exactly what Information is, Davies had to find a way to define it so that its relationship to Life & Mind would be more apparent. So again, he emphasizes that “it is a purely abstract concept, like patriotism or political expediency or love.” Nevertheless, “information clearly plays a physical role in the world. . . . Information makes a difference in the world. We might say it has ‘causal power’.” Like Maxwell’s metaphorical Demon1, organizing random molecules, Enformation is invisible but powerful. Claude Shannon made an important step to take the mystery out of Information, by quantizing it in terms of “bits” and “bytes”. But, it’s still not easy to visualize, except in metaphors of intelligent agents formerly described as “spirits”.
Demon In The Machine An obvious play on previous metaphors of “Deus Ex Machina”, and “Ghost In The Machine”, which are caricatures of Spiritual non- explanations for mysteries with no obvious cause, and no clear trail of Cause & Effect. The “Demon” of my worldview is EnFormAction.
1. Maxwell’s Demon : A thought experiment based on an imaginary tiny invisible agent who can create order out of chaos to counteract the destructive Entropy of thermodynamics. That’s also what Enformy does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
2. Mundane Information : EnFormAction is not supernatural, but just as natural as Energy. It’s energy plus intention, energy with a plan.
The Demon In The Machine How the hidden webs of information are solving the mystery of life
Paul Davies Physicist & Cosmologist ”What gives living things that enigmatic oomph . . .?”
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