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Nonphysical.org
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True or False? Testing the Cornerstones of Modern Biology What is the Truth? Science Textbooks Tell Us:
The Issues
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Dedicated to a Revolution in Biological Theory
Our Bodies Operate the Same as a Manmade Machine. True or False?
Is the living body simply a highly complex machine? Modern science presents this view. To challenge the common belief that the world is driven by supernatural forces, four hundred years ago Rene Descartes proposed the theory that all events of the natural world have a purely material cause. Today, conventional science rigidly adheres to this material or "mechanistic" theory of life. The theory provides an invaluable framework for scientific research and has led to the discoveries of modern medicine. However, the theory ignores the evidence that life is a vast creative force of conscious intelliigence. And it limits the powers of the conscious mind to the substance of matter. Is the living body simply a highly complex machine? On first glance, one might be inclined to think so. In general, the body appears to operate by the same physical principals that govern any manmade device. Like a manmade machine, the living body has the material structure of muscles, nerves, circulatory systems, and so on that appear to channel the forces that operate it. The neural wiring of the brain appears to operates the body's components. And like a manmade machine, the living body operates on energy taken from the environment. But there is a profound difference the living body and a machine that is ignored. A manmade machine is a rigid architecture constructed by external forces. A machine requires a solid structure to channel the random forces of the nonliving world into useful work. The insulated wires in a computer rigidly direct electrical forces through logic gates. Strong metal walls of an engine channel the force of exploding gases against the pistons to propel the car. Without confinement, the machine's forces of operation escape. They become disorganized and come to equilibrium and a state of rest or "timelessness" with the environment. The machine stops working. In stark contrast, the cells of a creature are fluid, ever-changing architectures. The cells' watery interiors contain membranes and molecular machines that continually change as these structures are continually broken down and rebuilt. As the body grows, inexplicably, its atoms and molecules cooperatively build and operate the structure of the living machine. For an unexplained reason, in living cells, the molecular randomness of the nonliving world suddenly looses it unruliness! In growth, the cells' intricately organized currents of molecular activity differentiate and expand into the swirling, dancing, structures of trillions of unique cells. Yet a cell has no rigid physical structure to explain this fantastic organization. What is directs this organization? Biologists scoff at the idea that a vital force organizes atoms and molecules into the machinery of the living body. Conventional biologists attempt to explain life as a collection of independent molecules interacting between themselves by the electromagnetic force. Yet when we try to model the molecular behavior of a cell as a collection of tiny, floating magnetic spheres, we see that the spheres just want to collect into lumps at equilibrium. This is exactly what molecules do in the nonliving world. Molecules move a state of "timelessness" in which the overall collection ceases to change. Biologists often assert, if vital forces exist, prove it! Yet, the proof is already present. Nothing about a collection of independent, floating magnets suggests why they should sustain the precise, ever-shifting chronology of molecular motion found in living physiology. Nothing about such a collection explains why it should assemble into the intricate architectures of trillions of cells as different from each other as spinal nerve, white blood, bone, or intestinal muscle cells. The Vitalist of old argued that an external organizing field directs molecules and atoms into life's inordinately complex structures. It is easy to see why this is true. Something must organize the randomness of the nonliving world. Should one consider the behavior of iron filings on a piece of paper directed by a magnet moving beneath the paper, one immediately sees many similarities to the behaviors of living molecules. The external field of the magnet moves the particles collectively. It organizes the particles into the shape of the field and sustains their highly regulated motion. It causes the particles to "heal" when the organization is disrupted. Its motion sustains the particles apparent disequilibrium with the environment. Only with the presence of an external field do we observe organization analogous to what is observed in life. The biologists who argue that life is fully explained by the known forces of physics neglect to note that manmade machines are created by external forces. Without the force of construction, nothing would assemble the atoms of the environment into a machine's structure. And in the end, a machine is constructed by the intelligence of the conscious mind (1). No one has proposed a tangible model by which an egg cell's tiny molecular mass can organize the astronomic volume of randomly moving molecules of the environment into the exquisitely intricate organized chronology of motion that is the physiology of the living body. And for good reason, no one will. As Erwin Schrodinger noted, the acknowledged laws of physics and chemistry cannot explain why natural randomness of the nonliving world totally changes it character to become the rigidly regulated molecular motion of living physiology. When a theory fails to explain what is observed, it is time to look for a new theory. Either a theoretical framework provides an adequate explanation for what is observed, or it does not. And the existing framework of conventional science, which seeks to explain life from the motions of independent molecules, completely fails to explain the overall choreography of life's molecular dynamic. This fact should be clearly identified in textbooks and any serious scientific discussion of life. Further discussion is found in The Vital Dimension, Chapters 3, 4 and 13.
Footnote: (1) Despite the ardent unpopularity in conventional scientific circles of the idea that life is a proactive force directed to "goals", there have been significant dissidents. One of these is the world renown Russian chemist, I. Oparin, who is credited for the scientific theory that life originated from the random assembly of organic molecules in the primeval seas. Yet, in later writings, he concluded, "It is especially important to note here that the analogy advanced by mechanists between organisms and machines cannot in any way explain precisely that which it should explain--the "purposiveness" of the organization of living beings. But machines are not inorganic systems simply acting on the basis of physical and chemical relationships alone. They are the offspring not of biological, but of a higher social form of the motion of matter--the social life of humans. The inner "purposiveness" of the machine, the adaptability of its structure to the fulfillment of certain work, cannot be revealed from the interaction of some law of the inorganic world, it is the fruit of the psychical activity of man, his creative efforts. Thus, when mechanists attempt to explain the inner adaptability of organisms by analogy to machines, they inevitably arrive at an especially idealistic conclusion--at the recognition that "purposiveness" of the organization of life is the result of the creative wish of the creator, "godly quantum mechanics," or simply speaking, at the recognition of the divine origin of life." Oparin, Aleksandr I. Genesis and Evolutionary Development of Life.
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