There is no universally accepted or official definition of life, but it has been thought[i]^,[ii] and written[iii] about since the beginnings of civilization.  From the outside, the reason seems to be that there is no universal agreement what life is, how it started or how it works.

In college I learned that all life evolved from a single cell, and later learned that first life occurred by natural causes.  This view continued until attending Steve Meyer’s Signature in the Cell book launch party.[iv] He gave a presentation that included this video which he narrated.  I was shocked because this shattered my understanding that life was chemistry, never imagining that machines, were involved, particularly molecular machines. That seemed impossible.  Machines are something I understand as I spent my life designing them.  But there was a concern as well.  The movie seemed to be oversimplified.  Piece parts that were being placed just “floated” into position which does not happen naturally.  How did the RNA know where to go?   How did the membrane gate know to “open the door” for the RNA?  How was the membrane sealed as it went through?  Many questions such as these lingered because my experience was that every detail of such an intelligent process must have a mechanism that controls the outcome of each step to insure success.  It seemed that the process had to involve much more than was shown in the movie.

My experience and intuition both told me that there is no possibility that such an intelligent process could start by natural causes. Not only would the first cell need the information to make it work, it would have to be constructed and the process started. How could this occur?

This was the beginning of my interest in the ID debate.

Life is an Intelligent Process

From an engineering perspective, life, [v] at all levels, is an intelligent process, a series of actions designed to maintain, perpetuate and grow itself.  Biologists often refer to life as a process, not realizing they are dealing with an intelligent process, not a natural one. All life, taken together is an intelligent process because life depends upon other life by means of environmental transformation, a “food-chain” and systematic recycling of raw materials.  At the cell level, the life processes find and gather raw materials, extract energy to run and maintain the cell’s life processes including cell division.  The same is true at the organism level except maintaining and growing the population is accomplished by reproduction and functionality is obtained by specialized cells. Each organism has hundreds of intelligent processes that control the temperature, digestion, respiration, etc.

Comparison of Life and Manmade Machines

All life forms are machines because they do intelligent work.  However, even the simplest life is much more; it is an intellignet process that is self-sufficient and adaptable to the point of reproducing so that it can continue to exist even after the demise of the original life form.  This is an indication of the high level of embedded intelligence especially when compared to manmade machines.

The other major difference is scale.  Life’s machines are highly complex, specified molecules whereas man’s machines are macro structures.  Life’s smallest living unit, the cell, is so small that we cannot see it without a microscope.  Life also has macro level forms, organisms, that are composed of trillions of specialized cells. Groups of specialized cells are used to build macro machines, organs, and other macro structures such as fingernails, hair and teeth enamel using specialized molecules.

Compared to lifeless machines, living machines are orders of magnitude more complex and sophisticated.  However, both obey the laws of physics and therefore both must have the logical functionality required of machines.  This concurs with observation despite our limited ability to see and instrument at the microscopic size and speed levels.  This lends credence to the belief that we are not missing some yet-to-be-discovered property that makes life different regarding ability to perform logical actions due to our incomplete knowledge of physics.

I would like to be able to put together a process action diagram like Figure 1 and Figure 2 for some action that takes place in life, such as the building of a protein shown in the video.  There are seven high level steps to this intelligent process as shown in Figure 3 and there are several machines involved as displayed in the video above, but there are far, far more details involved that are not shown.  A molecular cell biology textbook explains[vi]: “A ribosome is composed of several different ribosomal RNA (rRNA) molecules and more than 50 proteins, organized into large subunit and small subunit.”

The complexity is obvious.  A process action diagram like Figure 2 for building a protein molecule would likely take several hundred pages.  Such a diagram would have to explain how the functionality of every functional protein is accomplished. It is obvious that much has been learned at a high level despite the difficulties of understanding what is going on in real time at the molecular level. However, this understanding is miniscule compared to the understanding engineers have of the very much simpler machines we design and build. It is obvious there is much yet to be learned about life.

[i] Palyi, G.; Zucchi, C.; Caglioti,L. Proceedings of the Workshop on Life: A Satellite Meeting before the Millennial World Meeting of University Professors, Modena, Italy, 3–8 September 2000.

[ii] Abel, D. Is Life Unique?, Life, ISSN 2075-1729, 19 December 2011

[iii] Rizzotti, M. Defining Life: The Central Problem in Theoretical Biology; University of Padova Press: Padova, Italy, 1996.

[iv] Here is a link to Steve Meyer’s talk; the video starts at the 15 minute mark. Here is link to Video 1.

[v] Author’s Definition, Life:

a: a state of matter/energy continuously running a vital process in a cell or organism that sustains and perpetuates itself as distinguished from dead matter/energy.

See additional definitions and comments here.

[vi] Lodish et al, Molecular Cell Biology, Fourth Edition, 1

In college I learned that all life evolved from a single cell, and later learned that first life occurred by natural causes.  This view continued until attending Steve Meyer’s Signature in the Cell book launch party.[iv] He gave a presentation that included this video which he narrated.  I was shocked because this shattered my understanding that life was chemistry, never imagining that machines, were involved, particularly molecular machines. That seemed impossible.  Machines are something I understand as I spent my life designing them.  But there was a concern as well.  The movie seemed to be oversimplified.  Piece parts that were being placed just “floated” into position which does not happen naturally.  How did the RNA know where to go?   How did the membrane gate know to “open the door” for the RNA?  How was the membrane sealed as it went through?  Many questions such as these lingered because my experience was that every detail of such an intelligent process must have a mechanism that controls the outcome of each step to insure success.  It seemed that the process had to involve much more than was shown in the movie.

My experience and intuition both told me that there is no possibility that such an intelligent process could start by natural causes. Not only would the first cell need the information to make it work, it would have to be constructed and the process started. How could this occur?

This was the beginning of my interest in the ID debate.

Life is an Intelligent Process

From an engineering perspective, life, [v] at all levels, is an intelligent process, a series of actions designed to maintain, perpetuate and grow itself.  Biologists often refer to life as a process, not realizing they are dealing with an intelligent process, not a natural one. All life, taken together is an intelligent process because life depends upon other life by means of environmental transformation, a “food-chain” and systematic recycling of raw materials.  At the cell level, the life processes find and gather raw materials, extract energy to run and maintain the cell’s life processes including cell division.  The same is true at the organism level except maintaining and growing the population is accomplished by reproduction and functionality is obtained by specialized cells. Each organism has hundreds of intelligent processes that control the temperature, digestion, respiration, etc.

Comparison of Life and Manmade Machines

All life forms are machines because they do intelligent work.  However, even the simplest life is much more; it is an intellignet process that is self-sufficient and adaptable to the point of reproducing so that it can continue to exist even after the demise of the original life form.  This is an indication of the high level of embedded intelligence especially when compared to manmade machines.

The other major difference is scale.  Life’s machines are highly complex, specified molecules whereas man’s machines are macro structures.  Life’s smallest living unit, the cell, is so small that we cannot see it without a microscope.  Life also has macro level forms, organisms, that are composed of trillions of specialized cells. Groups of specialized cells are used to build macro machines, organs, and other macro structures such as fingernails, hair and teeth enamel using specialized molecules.

Compared to lifeless machines, living machines are orders of magnitude more complex and sophisticated.  However, both obey the laws of physics and therefore both must have the logical functionality required of machines.  This concurs with observation despite our limited ability to see and instrument at the microscopic size and speed levels.  This lends credence to the belief that we are not missing some yet-to-be-discovered property that makes life different regarding ability to perform logical actions due to our incomplete knowledge of physics.

I would like to be able to put together a process action diagram like Figure 1 and Figure 2 for some action that takes place in life, such as the building of a protein shown in the video.  There are seven high level steps to this intelligent process as shown in Figure 3 and there are several machines involved as displayed in the video above, but there are far, far more details involved that are not shown.  A molecular cell biology textbook explains[vi]: “A ribosome is composed of several different ribosomal RNA (rRNA) molecules and more than 50 proteins, organized into large subunit and small subunit.”

The complexity is obvious.  A process action diagram like Figure 2 for building a protein molecule would likely take several hundred pages.  Such a diagram would have to explain how the functionality of every functional protein is accomplished. It is obvious that much has been learned at a high level despite the difficulties of understanding what is going on in real time at the molecular level. However, this understanding is miniscule compared to the understanding engineers have of the very much simpler machines we design and build. It is obvious there is much yet to be learned about life.

[i] Palyi, G.; Zucchi, C.; Caglioti,L. Proceedings of the Workshop on Life: A Satellite Meeting before the Millennial World Meeting of University Professors, Modena, Italy, 3–8 September 2000.

[ii] Abel, D. Is Life Unique?, Life, ISSN 2075-1729, 19 December 2011

[iii] Rizzotti, M. Defining Life: The Central Problem in Theoretical Biology; University of Padova Press: Padova, Italy, 1996.

[iv] Here is a link to Steve Meyer’s talk; the video starts at the 15 minute mark. Here is link to Video 1.

[v] Author’s Definition, Life:

a: a state of matter/energy continuously running a vital process in a cell or organism that sustains and perpetuates itself as distinguished from dead matter/energy.

See additional definitions and comments here.

[vi] Lodish et al, Molecular Cell Biology, Fourth Edition, 125