Where physics meets biology: More information
DOI: 10.1063/PT.3.4667
Paul Davies (Physics Today, August 2020, page 34 ) states, “The synthesis of [Claude] Shannon’s information theory and thermodynamics led to the identification of information as negative entropy.” The second law of thermodynamics states that the overall result of any real physical process leads to an increase of entropy, or in an ideal process, the overall entropy remains constant, but there is no process that leads to an overall decrease of entropy. If information is negative entropy, then any real process destroys some information somewhere, or an ideal process preserves the overall information, but no process can increase the overall information in the universe.
DNA stores information, and living systems utilize it. How, then, did life begin from lifeless chemicals? Is the answer to that question the “new physics” that is required to reconcile physics and biology?
More about the authors
Edwin L. Kerr, (profespan@frontier.com) Valparaiso, Indiana.
