Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

202 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

b2861 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter “6x9”

[88, 93]. This concept was referred to as the von Neumann–Pattee princi-

ple of matter–sign complementarity in 1999 [21], to reflect not only the

history of the development of this important concept, but also its affinity

to the more general notion of information/energy complementarity

embodied in the new biology-based philosophical framework known as

complementarism [24, 50]: Matter–symbol complementarity [88, 93] and

matter–sign complementarity [21] may be viewed as special cases of the

more general information–energy complementarity [279].

If the content of Table 4.13 is correct in principle, biology may be

described as neither physics nor linguistics but both. In other words,

Biology is a complementary union of physics and linguistics. (4.22)

Biology has two complementary aspects — physics and linguistics. (4.23)

Physics and linguistics are complementary aspects of biology. (4.24)

Since linguistics is an important branch of the more general theory of

signs, namely semiotics, it behooves us to enquire into the possible con-

nection between biology and semiotics.

4.9 The Origin of Biological Information

Any theory attempting to account for life cannot avoid facing the funda-

mental question about how life originated in the first place. One of the

most physically realistic models of the origin of biological information

(and hence of life) that I know was proposed by P. W. Anderson and his

colleagues in the early 1980s [268, 269] (Figure 4.8). The model was

based on thermal cycling (i.e., the cyclical changes in the temperature of

the earth due to its daily rotation around its own axis) of an RNA “soup”

presumed to be present somewhere on the primordial earth surface some

3 billion years ago. The following quotation from [269] captures the

essence of the Anderson model of the origin of biological information:

... The autocatalytic mechanism which must be at the core of any pre-

biotic evolution scheme is the complementary conjugation of poly-

meric molecules, nominally RNA. It is assumed that the thermal cycle

periodically breaks up the weak conjugation bonds between RNA

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