The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread

The central dogma of molecular biology: DNA makes RNA makes Protein

DNA is a reference for proteins*, which are the functional molecules in cells. These are comprised of 20 unique amino acids, and each is coded for by a stretch of DNA known as a codon. Codons are always 3 base-pairs (nucleotides) in length.

DNA is made of 4 unique nucleotides; (A)denine, (G)uanine, (C)ytosine and (T)hymine. This means that there are 64 unique codons that can be made with these 4 bases (4*4*4).

In his 1996 book, La Fin des certitudes, co-authored by Isabelle Stengers and published in English in 1997 as The End of Certainty: time, chaos, and the new laws of nature, Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief. "The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism." This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.

Ilya Prigogine

The Nobel committee noted the importance of irreversibility in living systems, and pointed out the work of Lars Onsager on nonlinear thermodynamics, years before Prigogine.

Classical thermodynamics has played a dominant role in the development of modern science and technology. In suffers, however, from certain limitations, as it cannot be used for the study of irreversible processes but only for reversible processes and transitions between different states of equilibrium.

Many of the most important and interesting processes in Nature are irreversible. A good example is provided by living organisms which consume chemical energy in the form of nutrients, perform work and excrete waste as well as give off heat to the surroundings without themselves undergoing changes; they represent what is called a stationary or steady state. The boiling of an egg provides another example, and still another one is, a thermocouple with a cold and a hot junction connected to an electrical measuring instrument.

The Onsager "reciprocity relations" and minimum entropy production

The first investigator who developed a method for the exact treatment of such problems, for example of the thermocouple, was Onsager who received the 1968 Nobel Prize for this contribution. His approach was, however based on assumptions which in principle make it applicable only to systems close to equilibrium.

The great contribution of Prigogine to thermodynamic theory in his successful extension of it to systems which are far from thermodynamic equilibrium. This is extremely interesting as large differences compared to conditions close to equilibrium had to be expected. Prigogine has demonstrated that a new form of ordered structures can exist under such conditions, and he has given them the name ''dissipative structures" to stress that they only exist in conjunction with their environment.

The most well-known dissipative structure is perhaps the so-called Benárd instability. This is formed when a layer of liquid is heated from below. At a given temperature heat conduction starts to occur predominantly through convection, and it can be observed that regularly spaced, hexagonal convection cells are formed in the layer of liquid. This structure is wholly dependent on the supply of heat and disappears when this ceases.

Quite generally it is possible in principle to distinguish between two types of structures: equilibrium structures, which can exist as isolated systems (for example crystals), and dissipative structures, which can only exist in symbiosis with their surroundings. Dissipative structures display two types of behaviour: close to equilibrium their order tends to be destroyed but far from equilibrium order can be maintained and new structures be formed.

The probability for order to arise from disorder is infinitesimal according to the laws of chance. The formation of ordered, dissipative systems demonstrates, however, that it is possible to create order from disorder. The description of these structures have led to many fundamental discoveries and applications in diverse fields of human endeavour, not only in chemistry. In the last few years applications in biology have been dominating but the theory of dissipative structures has also been used to describe phenomena in social-systems.

(Press Release on the 1977 Nobel Prize )

Classical thermodynamics, by contrast with nonlinear thermodynamics, can only be used for the study of reversible processes and systems in or near thermal equilibrium. Prigogine's "dissipative" systems, today more commonly known as complex systems, could be described as "self-organizing," a property that "emergentists" said was a basic property of life, one that could not be explained by "reductionist science.

Prigogine became very popular with "holists" and "vitalists" who were looking for new laws of nature.

Prigogine was a major member of the Brussels School of thermodynamics. The Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico is devoted to the study of complex systems in the natural sciences and the social sciences.

Prigogine is perhaps the most famous name in chaos theory and complexity theory. Although he made very few original contributions to these fields, he is famous for them, nevertheless. His work (especially his 1984 book written with Isabel Stengers, Order Out Of Chaos) is a major reference today for popular concepts like "self-organizing, "complex systems," "bifurcation points," "non-linearity,", "attractors," "symmetry breaking," "morphogenesis," "autocatalytic," "constraint," and of course "irreversibility," although none of these terms is originally Prigogine's. The name "dissipative structures" and perhaps the phrase "far from equilibrium" belong to Prigogine, but the thermodynamic concepts were already in Boltzmann, Bertalanffy, and Schrödinger, and perhaps many others.

Let me try this: take any bit of matter we encounter, any bit whatsoever. Its manifestation, the fact it exists at all, is the result of complexity emerging from the furnace of the big bang.

Seth Lloyd says: The real answer is: "Nobody really knows".

The first second, and the birth of light

In the first second after the universe began, the surrounding temperature was about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 billion Celsius), according to NASA. The cosmos contained a vast array of fundamental particles such as neutrons, electrons and protons. These decayed or combined as the universe got cooler.
This early soup would have been impossible to look at, because light could not carry inside of it. "The free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds," NASA stated. Over time, however, the free electrons met up with nuclei and created neutral atoms. This allowed light to shine through about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
This early light — sometimes called the "afterglow" of the Big Bang — is more properly known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

Credit: NASA/WMAP
Gravitational waves controversy
While astronomers could see the universe's beginnings, they've also been seeking out proof of its rapid inflation. Theory says that in the first second after the universe was born, our cosmos ballooned faster than the speed of light. That, by the way, does not violate Albert Einstein's speed limit since he said that light is the maximum anything can travel within the universe. That did not apply to the inflation of the universe itself.
Space.com

The symptom of free will is self-determination.

Non-living bodies obey mechanical laws of nature and act according to external forces.

But the living organisms utilize physical laws in carrying out their biological functions;

therefore physical laws are not sufficient to describe them. For e.g., a bird’s flight path cannot be calculated from Newton's laws of motion.

Plants grow above the ground against the force of gravity, i.e. they exhibit negative gravitropism.

The movements of organism show self-determinism. Organisms utilize laws of nature to fulfill their ends.

This self-determinism is the central feature of all cognitive beings that is never found in non-living objects.

Nobel Biologist Barbara McClintock even considered the plants to have a subjective being.

Plants know if they are being taken care of. She was convinced that plants can feel pain and joy.

Cell can sense its internal errors during metabolism. Even gene defects are recognized and corrected.

The conclusion is that organisms have a strong sense of self-recognition and self-identity, and it plays a significant role during its life time.

Leading biologists like Shapiro to come to the deduction that ‘Consciousness’ is the universal and ubiquitous concept of life.