BIOLOGICAL ORDER 



orderly assemblage of amino acids into proteins, that is, for the 

 production with a probability 1 of a given specific structure. The 

 blueprint is called genetic information, and this is most regrettable. 



In a machine, the organization represents information, or structural 

 negative entropy. In an organism, the hereditary organization has 

 every right to be called information. 



Physicists know that the value of a message is not taken into 

 account in the measure of the information. A theorem by Einstein 

 or a random assemblage of letters both contain the same information, 

 provided the number of letters is the same. This should apply to 

 genetic information. For the physicist, all the genes, provided they 

 contain the same number of bases, have the same information, that 

 is, the same content, which is negative entropy. But the biologist 

 knows that each gene is different from every other, for each gene 

 controls the synthesis of one given specific protein. The biologist 

 currently speaks of information for the synthesis of a given enzyme. 

 The concept of probability has disappeared, and the idea of quality, 

 the specific value, is included in the biological concept of genetic 

 information. 



The gene as a machine, or organization, contains information that 

 is negative entropy. But, for the biologist, "genetic information" 

 refers to a given actual structure or order of the hereditary material 

 and not to the negative entropy of this structure. Both the physicist 

 and the biologist should be well aware of this situation. 



Entropy and Evolution 



When functional order is considered, it appears that the biological 

 order is considerably greater than the figure calculated by consider- 

 ing only the probability of the base sequence in the hereditary ma- 

 terial. But there is something more, for evolution must be also taken 

 into account. 



It is believed that life originated some 3 X 10^ years ago and that 

 the organisms existing today are the consequence of a long evolution. 

 Nothing positive is known about the origin of life, and our position 

 is, therefore, in a sense, privileged. Yet, for very good reasons, 

 biologists say that at the beginning there were organic molecules. 

 These were formed as a result of the action of ultraviolet light on 



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