
A New Physics Theory of Life (2014) - mads
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/
======
ClayFerguson
I have my own theory about how life and entropy interrelate. I think total
entropy in the universe starts at zero and will end at zero. This is because
'order' must be considered 'negative entropy'. As the universe evolves over
time patterns in molecules and behaviors of molecules begin to occur. Starting
with particles, atoms, molecules, compounds, planets, solar systems, galaxies,
etc. Physics doesn't drive just randomness, but it also drives order.

So you ask what is the ultimate MOST NEGATIVE entropy that exists? Life.
Specifically brains. Life forms are the most ordered things in the universe
(non-random/order). Brains are massively large negative entropy locations in
the universe. If you total up all positive entropy and negative entropy the
balance out to zero. The reason is because the laws of physics don't change
and DO create patterns.

You can even study this "Zero Entropy" law in Conway's Game of Life. As the
randomness increases over time to does the 'order', and i argue that the
roughly cancel out. It's a kind of 'information conservation' at work here. If
no new information is added into a system, it cannot gain or lose entropy,
because all the random events are creating 'patterns' and by definition a
pattern is an non-randomness and therefore negative entropy.

~~~
azag0
What you describe is not your theory, it's pretty much conventional
understanding of what life is in terms of thermodynamics -- a local capsule of
low entropy. It's just that in formal treatment of thermodynamics, there is no
negative entropy, there is just high entropy and low entropy. Also, the total
entropy of the universe is largely irrelevant. This view is nothing new. What
is new (or claimed to be new) about the work reported here is what drives the
emergence of these capsules of low entropy.

~~~
ClayFerguson
Thermodynamics states that in any closed system the entropy ALWAYS increases
over time. I think this law works, but they need to stipulate that it's for
situations where there is a begin-time and end-time (finite time range), but
if you integrate entropy over all time (even in a closed system), you end up
with a situation where the total area under the entropy curve is zero. In
other words if you sort of 'remove' time from the equation, and only consider
a closed system, then all particles are guaranteed to have had time to
interact with each other and fall into a well ordered pattern where there is
equal order and disorder. This is my belief and it is NOT the 'conventional'
understanding, but people are beginning to adopt this idea into their
thinking.

~~~
lomnakkus
> Thermodynamics states that in any closed system the entropy ALWAYS increases
> over time.

You left out a bit. If we take Wikipedia's definition (I know, I know):

> The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an
> isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal
> cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible
> process.

As far as is currently known the laws of physics are time-reversible, which
(ISTM, at least) would imply that the latter clause could very easily apply to
the universe as a whole.

(There's also the issue of whether the universe itself is a closed system.)

~~~
ClayFerguson
Yes I left out the part about steady state condition as well as absolute zero
temperature condition, because those are boundary conditions (constant
conditions) that don't involve time. My point is about an integral over all
time.

And yes the definition of "universe" is something I define as "a closed system
that doesn't interact with other systems", which is also a consistent
definition even if the multiverse theory is correct. If two things interact
then they are _by definition_ in the same universe.

------
yaksha13
The Paper is here
[http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v10/n11/abs/nnano.2015.2...](http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v10/n11/abs/nnano.2015.250.html)

It's actually pretty easy to read and interesting! I first saw this here:
[http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/how-do-you-say-life-
in-...](http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/how-do-you-say-life-in-physics)

Nautilus, Quanta Cosmos... all of them great publications for futurists

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I've seen a similar theory published before:
[http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/86/2013047...](http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/86/20130475).

------
edblarney
“He is making me think that the distinction between living and nonliving
matter is not sharp,”

Uhh - that is the basis for materialism. 'We are just particles' \-
essentially, ergo, we cannot be 'alive'. It's funny that Scientists have to
figure this out, when it's the fundamental underlying presumption in their
branch of metaphysics ... and frankly why we may very well be able to further
refine/understand evolution in material terms, we cannot - by definition -
explain 'life' in terms of materialist thinking ... because by definition it
is excluded from existence. In materialism, we can really only have 'the
appearance of life' or intelligence etc.. Materially, we are just a 'bunch of
random noise'. Which is obviously an unfulfilling idea, but one which
nevertheless rests at the root of science as we understand it today.

~~~
xorxornop
This strikes me as an entirely superfluous distinction. "just" random noise?
What other kind of life is there..?

Why can't life be that? Why the "just"? Needless romanticism

~~~
edblarney
No, it's not romanticism, it's metaphysics.

I'm reminding the commenter in the realm of materialism there really is no
such thing as life, the universe is just a bunch of random noise including you
and it.

If you think life exists you need something other than materialism, like
spirituality etc..

It's an important paradox sitting right at the base of our rational world view
that few realize exists.

------
mike_ivanov
An interesting question to ask is how far does it go up the emergence ladder.
E.g. do the organisms dissipating more energy have better chances of survival?
Or perhaps even whether industries producing more infrared radiation are the
most effective ones?

Ultimately (if this is true) - would it be possible to increase efficiency of
a complex system (social, financial, computational - doesn't matter) by
consciously shifting the radiation it emits to the lower end of the spectrum?

~~~
jbdistaken
>E.g. do the organisms dissipating more energy have better chances of
survival?

in general, no. E.g., a child with a high fever will dissipate more energy
than a child without a fever over the same time period. who is more likely to
survive?

We can even consider a specific type of dissipation that an organism uses to
store memories (longer lifetime of memory = less reversible = requires more
dissipation), there's no guarantee that the memories stored will be useful for
survival. storing a memory that lasts 100 years costs dissipation that could
be better spent elsewhere for an organism that typically lives 1 week...

but with appropriate restrictions on what is meant by dissipation, organism,
... the timescales involved, the driving ... then the reverse statement can be
true "more likely evolutionary outcomes" <among all possible trajectories of
configurations of 'organisms'> "are going to be the ones that absorbed and
dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to
getting there.”

~~~
mike_ivanov
Let me reframe my question this way: given the child you mentioned, would
he/she be better off in life if you construct and provide such a framework
where that child could consume and dissipate more energy than other children?

That is, can we _control_ (not just predict) the outcome by manipulating
dissipation patterns?

------
fuzzieozzie
Good reporting of a simple idea that me and my under-graduate colleagues
discussed 30+ years ago!

This is not a "new" theory -- rather it is simply new reporting of an old
idea.

------
tbabb
This theory strikes me as teleological rather than explanatory-- it explains
phenomena in terms of their effects rather than their causes. Effects come
afterwards, so they can't be the explanation for something that's already
happened.

Really I do not see what this idea is supposed to add. Darwinian evolution is
a perfectly complete, tight, and verified explanation for the existence and
complexity of life.

~~~
trhway
> Effects come afterwards, so they can't be the explanation for something
> that's already happened.

actually theory of emergence of dissipative structures in the energy flows is
kind of showing that the energy flow, i.e. 2nd law is the cause, not the
effect

>Really I do not see what this idea is supposed to add.

even without showing it as a cause, there is still important role of these
works is to show compatibility at all stages and scales of the life process
with the basic physics laws like the 2nd law. We kind of intuitively know that
this is true, yet to be shown scientifically true is still a pretty big work.

>Darwinian evolution is a perfectly complete, tight, and verified explanation
for the existence and complexity of life.

Does it explain clearly and in all the details why we have RNA and those 20
amino acids instead of some other structure and those amino acids that has
recently been and will be more in future synthesized in the lab? "Better fit"
is obviously a right answer, yet it doesn't provide any details on what
specifically was better "fit" with "what". It is like Archimedes law - we
still have huge field of naval engineering resulting in multitude of hulls,
etc.. despite the law itself being "complete, tight, and verified
explanation".

------
AJ007
[http://www.englandlab.com/research.html](http://www.englandlab.com/research.html)

------
jaequery
How far back does evolution go? Is it the time the first cells were created?
Or does it go even further back?

~~~
lawpoop
Evolution probably goes back before cells.

The first living thing would have to be a self-replicating molecule that uses
energy. Different forms of this self-replicating molecule would have different
reproductive success.

There is a not-unpopular theory that the original form of life on earth was an
RNA molecule. RNA is a special molecule, because it can both act as a store of
data, and as an enzyme for catalyzing reactions. According to this theory,
specialized data storage in the form of DNA evolved later, along with
specialized enzymes.

Here's a brief overview of the theory that shows how evolution could happen
with chains of RNA only:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1xnYFCZ9Yg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1xnYFCZ9Yg)

Jack Szostak at Harvard has a great series of videos explaining this theory,
and also a number of experiments that he and his students have performed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPzWrv6l9l0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPzWrv6l9l0)

~~~
jaequery
Going further back, are planets and stars forming also part of evolution?

~~~
lawpoop
I would say no, because they are not self-replicating things.

A part of the definition of living things is that they reproduce. That
reproduction (with variation) is a necessary precursor to evolution. Stars and
planets do not reproduce themselves, so they cannot be said to undergo
selective evolution.

~~~
edblarney
"A part of the definition of living things is that they reproduce."

Kind of :).

We don't really have a definition for life.

Imagine an alien ship landed, and out popped these things. They said 'hey
what's up' in their language. Cool. And as it turned out - they don't 'die' by
natural causes, or reproduce. The pop out of some chemical process. It's a
little creative, but physically plausible.

We could build 'mechanical wombs' fecundated with ovaries and sperm we farm.
Is that reproduction? What if we are able to synthesize sperm and ovaries form
scratch? 'Reproduction'? Depends on how you look at it I suppose :)

As the Scientist stated in the article, there really isn't a hard boundary
between the living and non-living, because when you reduce our definitions
down the level of physics, there is no distinction, at least materialist
terms.

'Life' is something we observe, and give a name to, but because of the
underlying assumption of materialist science (that the Universe is
matter/energy bouncing around randomly) - it really doesn't have any real
objectivity. You (or we, collectively) just define it to be what you (we) want
it to be and that's it.

~~~
lawpoop
We don't have one single definition of life, but we do have _definitions_.
There are typically a few properties we think living things share, to rule out
things that are not living from those that are living.

For instance, crystals reproduce themselves, but we do not consider them
living. So we decide that livings things use energy, which rules out crystals
as being alive.

Fire reproduces itself, and it uses energy, but we don't consider it to be
living, so we say that living systems preserve information
[http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=360](http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=360)
.

Viruses reproduce themselves-- in fact, using the same information-containing
molecules that living cells do, DNA and RNA, but they do not use energy
(instead they hijack the metabolic machinery of living cells). So we do not
consider viruses alive.

So in various definitions of life, you will find criteria such as "uses
energy" (has a metabolic process) and "transmits information" (in the form of
DNA).

That we have defined such criteria does not mean we arbitrarily made up such
distinctions. Human beings differentiated between mechanical and
electromagnetic energy, or had the concept of "species", long before we had
strict scientific definitions of these things. It is the same with living and
non-living phenomena. The only difference is that we arrived at a chemo-
physical definition of living much later than other phenomena.

Saying that life is not objectively real is nonsense. That's like saying
there's no objective distinction between mechanical and radioactive energy.
They're objectively different phenomena, in theory and in measurement. The
ultimate conclusion of this line of reasoning is that any distinction between
any thing or phenomenon is not objectively real, just a fancy of the mind
(which you will find agreement on with Hindu and certain Buddhist
philosophers).

Or perhaps you are actually claiming that rocks are alive? Or there really are
no differences between a rock and a lichen? If there is no objective, "real"
difference between living and non-living things, then a quartz crystal is
actually alive (and perhaps conscious) like new-agers claim?

In the case of your aliens, I would argue they are intelligent, but not
alive-- sort of like a robot or AI machine. Those aliens are like a side
effect of that chemical process. (Unless they in turn re-created the chemical
situation that they originate from-- but then of course, they would be
reproducing, and thus, living things).

Your aliens aren't that different from if we sent drone robots that we created
to aliens. Those drone robots aren't living, though they may be intelligent,
and interact intelligently with the aliens. But they don't reproduce; they are
a side effect of another living chemical process-- namely, human beings.
Unless, of course, those drone robots managed to re-create themselves, or
created humans which in turn replicated drone robots.

In the mechanical wombs thought experiment, we are still alive, because we are
reproducing. Your mechanical womb is basically an artificial egg. A chicken is
just an egg's way of making another egg, after all.

Would you consider a test-tube baby not to be alive?

A multicellular organism is epiphenomical of the cell, and the cell is
epiphenomenal of the replicating DNA molecule. Life doesn't start with
complex, conscious multicellular organisms like ourselves; it starts with
simple, replicating molecules-- namely, DNA.

~~~
edblarney
You're missing my point.

"That's like saying there's no objective distinction between mechanical and
radioactive energy. They're objectively different phenomena, in theory and in
measurement."

Of course they are different material phenom - but I''m indicating that in
materialism - you have the problem of only being able to define what life is,
in very materialist terms - which will always fail.

So _you_ say: "Life is these properties". Fine.

Now you can go out and measure things.

Some things are 'life' , some are 'not life'.

According to your definition.

But however you chose to define it, materially, it falls apart very quickly.

"In the case of your aliens, I would argue they are intelligent, but not
alive-- sort of like a robot or AI machine."

I don't agree with this. How can you say this alien that appears in every way
to be intelligent, creative, conscientious, self-aware - 'conscious' \- is not
'alive'.

Let me ask you - are _you_ 'conscious'?

Prove it to me!

\--> You can't <\--

By empirical, objective, materialist measure _you_ are a biological machine -
a material process - that's it.

You can say: "I reproduce therefore I'm alive"

The alien says: "I'm as alive as you are, and reproduction has absolutely
nothing to do with it"

Or rather: The alien is by all accounts and every reasonable observation -
'alive'\- it just doesn't fit into another, narrow mechanical view of what
life is.

He makes a pretty good case.

So - however you chose to define life 'materially' \- anyone can likely
quickly come up with a situation in which you have the appearance of
'consciousness/life' that breaks those rules.

It's because we're trying to define it the wrong way, using a set of rules
that won't permit it.

Another hint:

The definition of 'life' that you've just offered is not cannon.

So how is it possible in 2016 that we don't have an obvious, simple, and
objective definition of 'life'? How could we possibly even debating this?

... because materialism (i.e. the assumption that the Universe is a big mess
of particles interacting randomly according to set of rules) - does not allow
for it.

You may chose to identify certain 'patterns' as 'life' \- but your choice of
what constitutes life is completely arbitrary.

"Saying that life is not objectively real is nonsense. "

Really, this is false. It's only 'real' if you arbitrarily define a set of
processes to be 'life'.

You'd basically be defining 'life' as just a set of mechanical properties -
that is really insufficient for describing what we all observe in 'life' \-
which is to say something transcendent.

Trying to define life in material terms is actually, kind of 'ridiculous'. We
like to try it, because it's the only way we know how to be objective.

But - I'd argue that 'life' is the _expression_ of something - not the
existence of material components.

And I'm not making this argument out of opinion - it's rooted in what any
normal person would consider to be 'alive' vs. 'not alive'.

"That which is expressed" \- not the mechanical details of that expression.

Biology (and physics) is ultimately a useful tool for some things, but it is
not ultimately going to help us find the answer to what 'life' is, in many
ways, it will send us in the wrong direction.

~~~
lawpoop
Consciousness is a different question/problem -- we don't have any good
definition for it, and certainly no way to measure it.

Rather than saying some things are life and others non-life, I would instead
say that some are living and (most) others, non-living.

Are you seriously going to claim there is no objective way to say that a fish
is alive and a star isn't?

If so, I would surmise that we disagree on fundamental issues and thereby
cannot have a productive discussion.

"By empirical, objective, materialist measure you are a biological machine - a
material process - that's it."

Do you have empirical, objective, materialist and definitions of "biological"
and "machine"? Or even "process"?

