EVOLUTION: QUANTUM OR ANALOGUE PROCESSING?

We now know a little about molecular processing, but molecules are made up of particular combinations and precise arrangements of atoms. They are processors, logical processors.

But is the real processing power beneath the skin of those machines? If so, is it quantum or analogue processing? It certainly is not digital. Analogue might seem the most likely on the face of it, and perhaps on the face of it it is.

But beneath the beneath, what if it is quantum? That would certainly explain how there is the staggering amount of computing power needed to get from atoms to simple molecules to massively complex proteins and finally to us. And how there is such staggering processing power in the brain. Are billions of neurons, or quintillions of molecules really enough to accomplish what we do every second? Or what a miniscule flying insect does?

That seems unlikely. It also seems unlikely that all those sub-atomic particles are just there to make up larger entities, or even only to provide electrons and ions for subsidiary functions.

So perhaps the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was on the right track, and the earth is a computer--or more accurately the whole universe. As the poet said, 'The stars, which are the very brain of heaven'; and George MacDonald in At the Back of the North Wind used the phrase 'thinking stars.' Perhaps they were right, and the universe is highly active in a very different way to what traditional physicists imagine.

The universe: Heaven's creation-machine.

SORRY, DARWIN

It is logical selection, not natural. From atom to molecule to organ to organism it is logical selection.

The fundamental dictum in logic applies: If, if and only if the premise is true and the reasoning is true will the conclusion be true.

If the premise and reasoning are true, a true premise will be selected, which then becomes a premise for further logical processing ('reasoning').

It is not blind chance. It is sighted. It has been given the sight of logic, the intelligence of the aeons.

WATER FOR FUNCTION NOT LUBRICATION

To suggest that the dance of water round protein molecules that has been observed is for lubrication, as reported in an earlier post, must at best be a very limited description of why water is needed for life.

A lubricant is just a passive element in mechanical function. Water is obviously far more than that. It is part of the function. Without its presence the protein machinery could not work. It is as vital, in every sense of the word, as the chemical structure of a protein and its folding. The many different forms--physical, ionic, chemical, temporal, vibrational, etc--that the water molecule can take in different circumstances and proximities must also be bound up with the proper functioning of invidual molecules and their inter-functioning.

Water is part of the processing of bio-machinery, it is part of its logic, it is part of its logical power, it is part of its input and output. Without it nothing vital could work.

That dance shows it to be active, not passive.

Water is not only active for each molecule, it is active for the working together of all the molecules. A lubricant eases the working together of different parts; water enables them to work together.

INTELLIGENT EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOUR

Now that it has been established that behaviour switches genes on and off (see earlier posting), it must therefore be true that any behaviour that assists an organism's flourishing survival will establish genetic patterns that will persist through the generations.

Success breeds success.

So the bird that is best at building a nests stay put in a storm-tossed tree, or is best at choosing a site for them that will be most sheltered from storms, will have more chicks, and that genetic knowledge will be passed on.

Switches that are habitually switched on are likely to be on rather than off in future generations. Behavioural/genetic experiments and the processing of the ages fine-tunes genes and achieves ever better coding.

WE ARE THE SUMMATION OF TIME

Organisms exhibit the accumulated molecular processing of the ages.

As the poet Tennyson put it in Ulysses:

'I am a part of all that I have met,
Yet all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.'

FOOD AND OUR MOLECULAR MACHINES

Food is needed by our molecular machinery for two reasons: energy and parts. Parts to be used as building-blocks for making more machines, and parts needed as plug-in subordinates for machines so that they can carry out a particular function.

Water is the most common example, partly because of its lubricating dance round the machines and partly because it is needed for their operation in ways we have yet to discover.

Food can therefore be seen as logical input, some of the 'premises' upon which the processing of logical devices work for the functioning of the organism.

The input, processing and output are the logical necessities of life.

If, if and only if the premises are true and the reasoning is true will the conclusion be true. So long as premises and reasoning remain true, life is the conclusion. When they fail to be true the conclusion ceases to be life.

...

That means the old adage, 'Feed an illness', can be seen as beefing up the logical input in order to process the logical anomaly out of the organisam. It is rather like tracking down and prosecuting a criminal in order to get him out of society--more input from the police, the lawyers and the courts is needed.

SKINKS MAKE THEMSELVES LEGLESS IN AUSTRALIA

Over a mere 3.6 million years some Australian skinks have developed an elongate, limbless form. Limbs were not needed for swimming through water and sand, so that genetic expression was processed out of them by the clever biomolecular processing of the aeons.

Nowadays other organisms in Australia have found far quicker ways of getting legless. But not so much intelligence is at work. An evolutionary dead end, obviously.

DNA-TO-LIFE FEEDBACK LOOP AGAIN SHOWN

It is only a short step from the life-to-genes/genes-to-life feedback loop shown in this ScienceDaily article to the evolutionary feedback and development of organisms. 'Go forth and multiply and change and improve your kind throughout the aeons. Even change your kind to a better kind.'

It is of course not just genes involved. The organism rests on its molecules, all of them, so the feedback/feedforward loop is universal.

As, by a nice coincidence, some Spanish snails well illustrate.

JUNK DNA HAS A VITAL FUNCTION

Surprise, surprise. The so-called 'junk' DNA is being found to be very important. The molecules are obviously much smarter than the 'junk' scientists. Details in ScienceDaily.

GENE-SPLICING A NORMAL FUNCTION

This ScienceDail report shows that messing about with the structure of mRNA so as to form different proteins from the same gene is a common cellular function.

That surely is one of the mechanisms by which organisms adapt to their environments--i.e., by which they evolve. Smart molecules messing about with the base structure to make it better. The slow processing of the aeons, and here we all are--Hallelujah!

FAST MOLECULAR MEMBRANE FUSION AT SYNAPSES

How signals flow between neurons is explained by new research, reports ScienceDaily

MOTOR PROTEIN THAT REWINDS DNA

The molecular motor that rewinds DNA when it has become unwound, the little fixer that untangles the tangles and pops the bubbles and restores proper genetic function has been identified, reports ScienceDaily.

MACHINERY OF MEMORY IDENTIFIED

This ScienceDaily article provides good evidence for what I have long postulated is the way memory functions is set up and functions--i.e., that the brain uses a molecular addressing system to mark a network, a pattern, of neurons that constitute a specific memory.

Just as we put addresses into the nodes on a computer network so that messages get to the right one, so the brain does something similar. We, subconsciously, have emulated, very crudely, how our own brains work.

And just as a computer network hunts for the right node, so a neuron hunts for the connections that have the same molecular marker on a synapse. That explains why we almost get a memory, it is on the tip of our tongues, then 'Ah, got it!' as the last neurons are found.

That system would also make the most efficient use of neurons, because the same ones could be used for many different memories. Each one could have many different molecular addresses, linking it under different circumstances to a vast range of different network patterns. Otherwise the brain would be in danger of running out of storage. But with a hundred billion neurons, each with a myriad of molecular addresses, the storage and processing power would be infinite.

CELL MACHINERY GIVES UP MORE SECRETS

The intelligent machinery of the cell has given up some more secrets, as this
ScienceDaily report details. Some of the intricate biochemical networks that enable genes to express themselves have been traced.

NO DNA IS JUNK

The vast stretches of DNA that ignorant, hubristic scientists used to dismiss as 'junk' are actually the processors that run the genetic programs, which is how the same genetic coding can produce different results in different organisms. The processor is different.

Add to that changes in the programming and you have a powerful mechanism for making far-reaching differences with a small percentage of alterations.

Background details in this ScienceDaily report.

DARWIN WAS WRONG ABOUT THE FITTEST

Darwin was wrong. It is not survival of the fittest made by random changes and happenstance. It is survival of the best processing. It is not the fittest that survive-- it is those that have the most logical biomolecular processing relative to their environment.

They survive because they are made that way, they are not made that way by survival. It is not a matter of blind chance. It is deliberate processing, and the best output survives.

Darwin saw only the result, and said that was the cause.

And because the processors and programs are both made of DNA it is small wonder that the same or similar results can be arrived at by different routes. Logic is logic.

LIFE IS 68 MOLECULAR MACHINES?

This report from ScienceDaily says that only sixty-eight molecules and their 'choreography' are the foundation of cellular life. And not all them are controlled by genes (surprise, surprise!).

EVOLUTION IS SLOW BUT POWERFUL PROCESSING

(To put the basic point again, in different words): Just as in the brain the seemingly slow speed at which the signals pass through it are actually part of its stupendous processing power, so too the aeons-slow speed of life's bio-molecular processing is part of the staggering anti-entropic power of its evolutionary progress through countless generations.

PROTEINS MOVE LIKE MACHINES

Surprise, surprise! ScienceDaily.

They are machines, logical machines. Smart logical machines.

DNA CAN RECOMBINE TO MAKE NEW SPECIES

Researchers have shown how broken sections of DNA to change genomes and spawn new species, reports ScienceDaily.

IN LIFE WATER IS MORE THAN WATER

'Water, as we know it, does not exist within our bodies. Water in our bodies has different physical properties from ordinary bulk water, because of the presence of proteins and other biomolecules. Proteins change the property of water to perform particular tasks in different parts of our cells.' Full ScienceDaily report here.

ATP ADP CYCLING NOW SIMULATED

Powerful software has for the first time simulated the detailed mechanics of the process in which ATP is cycled back to ATP after being converted to ADP when it releases a phosphate group--the process that provides the energy for most cellular functions.

Details in this ScienceDaily article.

AN EMBRYO IS EVOLUTION ON FAST-FORWARD

Evolution is the slow, intelligent increase in complexity via molecular processing over the aeons, starting with single cells and culminating in human beings.

Without evolution the development of the embryo would be impossible, because it too begins with a single cell and via the same intelligent molecular processing develops into an organism--for a human in only twelve weeks. That development is just evolution on very fast fast-forward. The process that was worked out over the aeons and perfected over the aeons can now take place at high speed.

Without the intelligent process of general evolution humans could not exist. Without the intelligent process of specific evolution humans could not be born. Both the evolution of all species across all time to produce humans at the apex, and the evolution of the individual human across the individual's time, are equally necessary.

ATP-ADP CYCLING NOW SIMULATED

Powerful software has for the first time simulated the detailed mechanics of the process in which ATP is cycled back to ATP after being converted to ADP when it releases a phosphate group (the process that provides the energy for most cellular functions).

Details in this ScienceDaily article.

CHEMISTRY IS...

Chemistry is the logic of matter and forces at atomic and molecular level.

CELLS ARE FULL OF SWITCHES

Surprise, surprise! Analysis with a supercomputer has found thousands of molecular switches in cells (see the full article in ScienceDaily).

But the researchers' assumption that 'evolution might stumble upon a switch' overlooks the obvious--that it processed its way to making a new one because it calculated a need for it.

Ditto the insertion, deletion and transfer of segments of DNA in organism. The processing over large timescales with low-power molecular-logic machines is slowly working things out.

Bio-molecular logic is a self-programming, self-modifying, self-improving, self-exploratory, self-analysing network of molecular machines beavering away at the base of an organism.

RESEARCHERS WATCH RNA MACHINES WORKING

Researchers have reported that they are the first to observe the dynamic, ratchet-like movements of single ribosomal molecules in the act of building proteins from genetic blueprints--reports
ScienceDaily.

The astonishing accuracy and complexity of the system is ahown in another ScienceDaily article, which describes how it not only selects the right molecules but can reject wrong ones, even discriminating between ones that are little different.

Life's superb machinery at work.

HUMAN INTERACTOME KEY TO UNIQUENESS

A new study indicates that the interactions between proteins, dubbed the human interactome in humans, could hold one of the keys to what makes organisms unique--not genetic makeup alone, reports ScienceDaily.

That should not be surprising. The processing power of a large network, both its processing power in real time and over a long period through many generations, is far greater than that of a smaller one. There will therefore be greater diversity in evolutionary development and in life's day-to-day actions and reactions.

WHY DO WE SEARCH FOR BETTER WAYS?

Question: Why is the brain constantly learning and searching for better ways of doing things?

Answer: Because the intelligent biological molecules at the base of our physical being are doing the same thing.

The difference is that the brain, having the combined processing power of myriad molecules and neurons, does it at stupendous speed. They do it over the aeons, constantly perfecting cells, organs and organisms.

So they have two functions. In real time they process real-time matters, the low-level processing without which we cannot function. In aeon-time they process better organisms.

SILENT GENES ARE WHISPERING

Genes previously thought to be off are actually functioning at a low level, with unknown effect, reports ScienceDaily.

LOGICAL DEVICES AND LIFE

LOGICAL DEVICES

The atom is a logical device. It is built of various particles of energy that have a logical relationship with each other and a logical influence on each other. Collectively they form a logically functional unit from whtih larger logically functional units can be built. The logical power of the super-structures (the molecules) increases exponentially with the number of units they contain.

Some types of atoms are particularly well-suited to forming powerful molecules, notably carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, etc.

Life is the ultimate logical construct.

MORE EVIDENCE OF THE BIO-LOGICAL HIEARCHY

These articles in ScienceDaily, one about molecular communication the other about cellular communication, show that we are starting to zero in on the details of basic biological functioning.

'Biological' turns out to be a nice pun. It is indeed the logical functioning of life: bio-logical.

We have also managed to film an electron going about its business.

Perhaps we shall one day be able to figure out how the hierarchy of the logic of life works, all the way up from the electron, or lower, right up to the intelligent molecular machines and the networks of them on which our cells are founded.

FOOD CHANGES US

We are what we eat, as this study shows. The biolmolecular logic is changed by diet, clearly one of the factors that it adapts to as it processes over the aeons.

DANCING WATER CHANGED BY PROTEIN FOLDING

This blog speculated in an earlier posting that water might be used by proteins for more than just lubrication, that there might be an intelligent use. Now research using terahertz spectroscopy gives some evidence for that. But even without the empirical science it is reasonable to think that the modifications described are not meaningless accidents, so there may well be a signalling aspect.

THE MOLECULAR PROCESSING OF EVOLUTION

As the organism grows and learns, so do its biomolecules, adjusting at the fundamental level to its behaviour and interaction with the environment.

Thus the proto-bird flaps its proto-wings to help speed it from a predator, and its molecules begin the long, multi-generational changes to feathers, bone, etc., and creation develops in defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Organisation, driven by fundamental intelligence--a myriad of smart nanonmachines--triumphs over disorganisation.

The slow calculation of the aeons, ever filtering and improving, generation after generation, just as the brain processes thoughts and arrives at the best conclusions, but far slower, because the processing power is far less.

A feedback-loop, back and forth between the basic molecular machines and the full organism, IS ever refining, adapting, living...

MAGNETIC CONTROL OF MOLECULAR MACHINES

This ScienceDaily story details an exciting, new, magnetic way of controlling cellular molecules. The effect is the same as when drugs or other molecules bind to the same molecules.

The mechanical method has exactly the same effect as the 'chemical' one. That could only happen if the cellular molecules are machines. QED.

THE LOGIC AND TRUTH OF BEING

We are founded on logic, on the truth of our being. When we betray logic and truth we not only betray what we are we also damage its fundamental functioning and structure, and the result is physical and mental unease or disease.

MACHINES OF BEING

Body molecules--DNA, proteins, etc--are machines, not reagents.

So traditional pharmaceuticalists are like sculptors who think they are modifying sculptures but are actually blundering mechanics trying to modify an engine without realising that it is an engine, have never seen one running, and have no notion that it is or of how it is.

THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL MEETING-POINT

The organism senses and functions, at the highest level, as an organism. Below that are the senses and functions of the organs, below that are the senses and functions of the structures within organs, below that are the senses and functions of the cellular networks, below that are the senses and functions of the cells, below that are the senses and functions of the molecular networks, below that are the senses and functions of the molecules, which are made of atoms, which have their own fundamental 'senses and functions,' the actions and reactions we call physics and basic chemistry.

On fundamental atomic 'sense' is built a higher level of sense, the molecular; upon that is built a higher level, the molecular networks; upon that is built a higher level, the cellular; upon that is built a higher level, the sub-structures of the organ; upon that is built a higher level, the organic; upon that is built the highest level, that of the organism.

In short, the intelligence of the organism is built on molecular intelligence, which is built on the natural logic of the atom. The intelligence and functioning of the organism is founded on molecular intelligence and its interaction with the organism through the ascending intelligence hierarchy.

In, around and under that is the quantum world, the world of particles, where, as Einstein put it, there is 'spooky action at a distance', quantum entanglement. Particles can be 'aware' of and 'in contact' with others, synchronising instantly, constantly, irrespective of distance. That defies logic and physics, it is incomprehensible to the reasonable laws of the physical--because they are no longer in operation. It must, therefore, be the level of the spiritual. Thus in our desire for ever deeper knowledge of the physical universe we have dug down so far that we have gone out of it altogether, and found to our surprise or chagrin that the whole thing is founded on the spiritual. We have found the point at which spirit and flesh divide. Physics is at loss to explain anything at that level because it just is, existing and functioning in the eternal now, the realm of the spiritual.

As Time magazine said years ago, 'The scientists, after slogging up the mountain of knowledge for centuries, arrive at the top to find the theologians sitting there waiting for them.'

More light may be shed on the same point by this ScienceDaily report in August 2008. As an unknown amateur poet once said: 'In and out of things that seem are dancing things that are.'

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The level above the spiritual, the molecular, is where all our physical actions start. The mechanism of feeling thirsty, for example, can be seen as having as its fundamental cause the fact that the nanomachines we call protein molecules are lubricated by water, and that its attendant 'minuet' is also vital to their proper formation. So when there is insufficient water for all that to happen as it should it is the protein molecules that will notice it first. That message passed up the chain causes you to head for the tap.

(It also seems reasonable to think that that 'water network' is also used in intermolecular communication, using water molecules as a choregraphed pigeon-post. The dance set up by one molecule used to interface with the dance of the next one, like so many ballerinas passing a particular step across the stage, or so many bees signalling to their peers by their dance where they should fly to gather nectar.)

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 5th of December 2007.)

BACTERIA ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

They also show us the way to a true democracy.

The September/October 2006 issue of Update, the magazine for members of the New York Academy of Sciences, has a piece headed Microbial Chatter, How Bacteria Talk to Each Other, which outlines the researches of Bonnie Hassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

'She has found that bacteria like to live in complex multi-species communities and their ability to communicate and co-operate is essential to their survival,' says the magazine. Amongst other abilities, they are 'multilingual' (via signalling molecules called auto-inducers), and they have a communications system called 'quorum sensing' in which the majority rules. A single bacteria expressing what might be called an auto-inducer opinion cannot persuade group action; that happens only when a large number express it in unison. There are three main types of auto-inducers. One of them enables cross-species communications: 'An example of this ability for mixed-species consortia to talk among themselves is evident on our teeth: 600 species are there every morning in precisely the same organisation as the night before. The only way they can build their complicated biofilms is to know precisely what other cells are out there and to use the information to function effectively as a working conglomerate.'

Meanwhile, in the brains a few centimetres above those teeth there is touching faith in the notion that our system of government is a democracy, that it truly is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people', when it is nothing but an elected dictatorship--it is government of the people, by a few people, for some people. The bacteria have true a democracy. Every bug has an auto-inducer voice, every voice counts, and the action of the group is decided by the majority in unison. A molecular opinion expressed by only a few bugs is ignored.

Poor people. How sad! They have less organisational sense than the bugs on their teeth.

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 9th of October 2006.)

Footnote posting (2nd of May 2008): As this article in ScienceDaily shows, the phenomenon of 'quorum-sensing' as it is called can now be used to tell staph biofilms to go away. Rather like telling politicians ditto. Would that they would take the same kind of notice...

ONE NEURON IS A LOT OF POWER

Oh, surprise, surprise! They have just discovered that a single neuron has a lot of processing power, as this BBC report outlines.

This blogger has been saying for some time that the fundamental processing power in the brain, and in the entire body, is molecular. In each neuron there are billions of molecules. Small wonder that different synapses in the same neuron can be processing different bits of information.

The subconscious is far more 'sub'--far more fundamental--than we thought.

INSIGHT ON THE WORKING OF THE BRAIN NOW PROVED

This blog has from time to time gone right off the topic of energy to publish ideas about DNA, cellular proteins and the detailed workings of neurons. It is gratifying to see that empirical research has now shown those ideas to have been correct--see this report in
Science Daily.

The point was underlined by another report that came out a month later, also in Science Daily.

For the earlier postings click here, and here, and here.

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 18th of August 2007.)

YET MORE PROOF OF THE TRUTH ABOUT DNA

This BBC story again underlines the truth of what this blog first daringly postulated in November 2006 and reiterated in May 2007--i.e., that the traditionalists' notions about DNA are as much junk as the moniker they have long attached to most of our DNA.

Why did it take them so long to see it? How could they be so blind or arrogant or both and just dimiss what they did not understand, but which had for some reason been there for aeons, as junk? From the time I first heard the phrase 'junk DNA' I thought we would one day find out that it was not junk, and I said so to a DNA researcher way back in 1994, although it was not till November 2006 that I realised what it was. My first vague thoughts had been that it was like the comments in a program--which was nowhere near the truth that it is the machine that processes the program. The whole thing is a continuum, with all parts being necessary.

What is incredible is that such superlative intelligence can be built into and contained in what seems nothing but strings of chemicals, albeit rather complex ones, built of such simple fundamentals. It is enough to make you ponder on the real nature of life, the universe and everything. It is certainly enough to make you realise that Darwin et alia hardly knew/know a blind thing.

One wonders how much intelligence is built into DNA, and whether it has sufficient processing power to experiment, and thus to play an active role in improving an organism or in producing offshoot organisms. We no know that bacteria can 'vote' and that the preponderant chemically-communicated 'opinion' rules, so perhaps the preponderance of a particular genetic luggage in an organism's DNA, due to the survival of the fittest, causes more than just weight of numbers giving rise to certain offspring. It also causes joint processing and thus a greater refinement in the direction pointed to by those numbers. In other words DNA plays an active role not a passive one.

Footnote (23/07/2007): This article in ScienceDaily, which overturns traditional notions of proteins, shows that the functioning of the body is at base molecular. Myriads of molecular engines make up a cell (and not just proteins, obviously); myriads of cellular engines make up an organ; many of organic engines make up an organism. The high-speed internal action of the molecular engines will always be beyond our analytical capabilities, so the so-called 'designer drugs', which were predicated on the notion that proteins were static in shape, will remain a mirage.

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 18th of June 2007.)

DNA PROVED MORE THAN WAS THOUGHT

As this blog daringly postulated in November 2006, purely from gedunken processes, empirical research has now established that the so-called junk DNA processes genes. But that ScienceDaily report (derived from Nature magazine) shows there is still a long way to go. The full power and detailed processing function of the 'junk' has yet to be revealed and understood.

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 16th of May 2007.)

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE

But it is now far more subtle and lot less messy than when the Nazis did it. Instead of Auschwitz and Buchenwald we now have concentration camps of the mind and gas-ovens of the heart. But the result is the same. Good society goes up in smoke and generations are ruined.

In the story of the Emperor's new clothes, it was politically correct to say that his clothes were magnificent--'only fools cannot see them.'

The wise avoid the trap of allowing such psychological abuse to distort their vision and judgement, and their duty to cry out the truth.

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 7th of January 2007.)

DNA IS FAR MORE THAN WAS THOUGHT

Genetic researchers have long dismissed as 'junk' stretches of DNA that were not genes, a view I always refused to accept. But during the past year it has been found that the 'junk' has been faithfully reproduced generation after generation after generation, thus showing that it has an important function. Nature would not bother to take great pains to replicate junk. Also during the past year other researchers built a simple computer from DNA.

It is therefore obvious that DNA is not what the traditional view would have us believe. To see it only as genes is, literally, like seeing a computer as nothing but program and dismissing the rest as junk. Genes are only part of the story. DNA is far, far more. It is integrated processor, data-storage, program and power-source. It can therefore be seen as intelligent; it has design-intelligence; it is design-intelligence: stored design with the intelligence and power to manufacture it.

That applies not only to DNA: cell-proteins in general are processors. Which explains why the folding that is so critical alters the way that protein processor functions. Folding affects the shape and therefore the function of the processor; it also affects its internal power-level because it alters the electrical potential of the molecule. When the processor and its level of self-power are different the function of the molecule are different.

It has been found that bacteria communicate with chemicals and by that means intelligently co-ordinate their actions. Therefore DNA and other complex proteins also communicate using lesser chemicals, thus forming processing molecular networks, just as computers communicate with packets of data over networks; there is also electrical communication. Thus there is an intelligent processing network at the level of complex bio-molecules, literally making the cell; on top of that is the network of cells, together making up simple organisms, or organs in higher organisms; on top of that is the network of organs together making up the organism.

A computing analogy is that the complex molecules are the components in a computer, with DNA being the CPU; on top of that computers are formed into local networks; on top of that they are formed into the global Internet.

DNA is not only a programmed computer, complete with memory, data-storage and a power-source, it is self-programming, self-improving, exploring, like T-cells, for a better 'fit' to the external needs of the organism.

The few-percent different in genetic instructions between chimps and humans (although significant in such a huge total) is therefore only a fraction of the story. The processors are different, so the resulting organisms are different. A different design-intelligence, a different level of processing power, implements a different design. The DNA processor of a human being is far more intelligent and complex than the DNA processor of an insects or bacteria, so we are far more intelligent and complex. Even when the same code or data is processed the result is different. To adapt Marshall McLuhan, the processing is the organism.

That is true not only of the making on an organism it is also true of its behaviour and activities. For instance, a bird is not taught how to build a nest or rear young, etc.. It just knows, because its molecular processing informs its actions. There is behavioural intelligence, stored behavioural design at molecular level.

The same applies to memory--indeed to thinking in general. It is essentially molecular. Above that is the neural level, the functioning of neurons; above that is the functioning of the brain, all the neurons acting in concert, firstly in the sub-networks that are the discrete areas of the brain, then in the complete network.

A thought or a memory may thus be a unique network of neurons identified by marker proteins stored only in that neural set. Then to recall the memory would just be a matter of re-establishing the same network by establishing the start of it, or sufficient of it to begin the trace, then that starter neuron would interrogate all the ones linked to it to establish which have that protein, and so on, till that entire 'thought-net' has been searched out, retrieved and be firing. Any neuron could be in thousands of thought-nets, each very different, because each cell can have thousands of different proteins; it would just be linked to a different neural set characterised by the marker protein unique to that set. Modification of a thought or memory would be then the addition or deletion of neurons from a thought-net by making or eliminating the relevant marker neuron specific to that net.

The only argument left between the ungodly and the godly is whether that fundamental DNA and molecular intelligence arose spontaneously from nothing or was put there. If put there, was it processed into being by the quantum computer called Earth (Gaia, if you prefer), a subset of the quantum computer called the Universe? Or was it all put there by God?

But both sides of that puerile ID argument (i.e., 'intelligent design' versus evolution) have to accept that absolute proof, and also therefore absolute disproof, of the ultimate source are beyond the reach of human science. Neither side can absolutely prove the existence of anything, not even their own existence.

Relative proof, however, which is knowledge of communication, or knowledge of sensory awareness both internally with oneself and externally with others, is another matter. We all do that every day. And as Winston Churchill neatly put it: Men often stumble over the truth. Most of them manage to pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.

(Copied from a posting to my EStar blog dated the 3rd of November 2006.)