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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
DNA is the "Design and Operating System" of Life. True or False? Is DNA the "design and operating system" of life? To express any doubt that DNA with its genes directs the construction and operation of the living body might seem absurd. An enormous volume of scientific research demonstrates that genetic structure is linked to various body characteristics of plants and animals. When chromosomes are taken from one animal and implanted in a new egg cell, that cell will grow a creature that is nearly identical to the first. Research has identified master genes that influence tissue growth. But what is the actual mechanism by which all this occurs? What actually directs the precise movement of trillions upon trillions of molecules into the living body's intricate hierarchy of cells, tissues, organs, and systems? As the Nobel Prize physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, noted in the classic inquiry, What is Life?, there is no mechanism known to the physical chemist by which a single set molecules, however long or complex, should organize life's astronomic chronology of precisely directed molecular events. When we consider the body of an animal such as a human, it contains a mind-boggling number of precise three-dimensional structures. The body's 100 trillion cells are organized in intricate architectures that extend down to the the molecular level. The outer body contains variations in skin tissue and distributions of hairs and pores. Then one moves inward to the gross physiologic structures of muscles and bones, the wiring of the brain's trillions of neurons, to the location and interconnections of the various organs such as the heart, lungs, and stomach. Finally, the body's architectures extend down to the innumerable types of tissue cells each filled with the intricate structures of membranes, nuclei, chromosomes, mitochondria, ribosomes, metabolic machines, and so on. But perhaps more important, the living body is not a static three-dimensional structure. Life is a fantastic four-dimensional complexity of form and function. The body's fluid molecular contents are in continual, highly organized motion. In the growth of an organism, the developing body goes through innumerable transitional forms. The egg cell divides into the blastula and then differentiates into various embryonic states of the fetus. It continues to progressively grow and change in form as it becomes the baby, the child, the juvenile, and finally the adult. Even in the adult, the body's cells continually change their interior contents as their membranes and metabolic machinery are broken down and replaced. Their entire molecular contents dance with the currents of metabolic processes. And finally, there is the directed motion of the entire body's interaction with its environment. In animals, each creatures possess instinctive memory that is a complex chronology of behaviors and perceptions. How might DNA direct this ever-changing, four-dimensional movie of life? Starting with the substance of an egg cell, how might a set of DNA strands direct the chronological organization of molecules to develop into trillions of differentiated cells? How might a strand of nucleotides specify the uniform circumference of the eye's lens and iris, the length and packing of muscle cells in the biceps, the diameter and length of capillary in the lung, the diameter of a microvilli in the intestine, and so on? How might DNA actually direct the internal metabolic operation of these cells? How might DNA direct a creature's instinctive behaviors? Biologists assert that life is too complex for us to answer these question today. However, if life is no more than a process of matter, then a purely material mechanism must be able to fully explain events. Yet, no one has devised a conceptual mechanism, however fanciful, by which the molecular substance of DNA can actually direct the motion of trillions upon trillions of molecules to assemble into the myriad of ever-changing four-dimensional forms of the body. (To ponder the conceptual problem, lay a string of beads representing DNA on your desk. How might the information of this string specify the construction of a three-dimensional form such as your house or a computer? Remember, this strand is not like computer "software" that operates in the rigid, preexisting structure of a computer. Rather, this strand must build the "computer" that allegedly operates the information contained on it.) The Vitalists such as Hans Dreich argued that the actual structure of living form transcends the immediate physical substance of the body. This mysterious, greater form imposes order on the natural anarchy of the nonliving world. Today, modern biologists choose to aggressively reject this theory. However, since no one can devise an actual physical, molecular mechanism for what occurs, this leaves the question wide open. Erwin Schrodinger, the father of modern chemistry, concluded that the molecular substance of DNA cannot explain life's molecular organization, writing, "Whether we find it astonishing or whether we find it quite plausible, that a small but highly organized group of atoms (referring to DNA) be capable of acting in this manner, the situation is unprecedented, it is unknown anywhere else except in living matter. The physicist and the chemist, investigating inanimate matter, have never witnessed phenomena which they had to interpret in this way" (1). Biology textbooks should clearly identify the limits of genetic theory. Genetic theory provides a valuable framework for observation, but it provides no actual "mechanism" for the dynamics of life. Should we impartially look at the evidence, there is nothing about the structure of DNA that suggests it is the global organizer of life's chronologically organized molecular motion. This fact is completely ignored by conventional science and severely impairs an objective understanding of the nature of life. For further discussion, see The Vital Dimension by Carl Gunther.
Reference: (1) Schrodinger, Erwin, What is Life?
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