Re: DNA carries information

On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:26:47 +1000, j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx (John
Wilkins) wrote:

Kleuskes & Moos <kleuske@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins schreef:

Dick <remdickhm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I must have missed your statement of what qualifies as "information."
So, I will ask if you would state your opinion; What constitutes
information.

If the human body is constructed by strict chemical exchanges, I
gather this is exergy, then how can you claim that your central
nervous system is capable of transferring information? How did your
body acquire information? Isn't each verbal/written exchange just
another series of chemical alterations? Do you have "free will"?

I am intrigued that your use of definitions push the discussion to the
wall of determinism. Can you choose to alter your opinion, or is it a
strict reductionism of your body's inheritance plus experience
altering the neurons of your mind?

I think this is the fundamental question, free will or not free will?
If my cells have no decision functions, then how can my body make
decisions. I am reduced to following the dictates of my environmental
inputs on my inherited factors.

Wow. That's a long jump into murky crocodile-infested waters!

Let's just say this truism is sufficient: all information processing
systems involve the use of exergy. Not all exergetic reactions involve
the transmission of information. That is nothing at all to do with
determinism or free will. If we have free will, we have it through the
employment of exergy. But we're talking about simply physical systems
here - all that's required is that the laws of physics don't force the
states that might be attained.

I've been following this debate with a lot of interest, but a few
questions remain, especially concerning "exergy". I hope you can answer
them, since that would help me make sense of this debate

1) How is "exergy" different from "energy"?
2) Can we measure this property, and if yes, how?
3) If some reactions are "exergetic" how does these reactions differ
from exothermic reactions?

Well I am no thermodynamics phyicist, but as I understand it exergy is
"free energy", in the sense that it is energy that is available to do
work. Or, to put it another way, it is the energy in a system that can
be used to bring the system into equilibrium.

Alll physical systems are either in equilibrium, in which case their
entropy is locally maximised, or out of equilibrium, in which case their
entropy can yet be increased. A human body can do exercise by releasing
energy to the muscle fibres, and when all that energy is exhausted, it
is at equilibrium - the technical term is death...

We measure it in arcane ways - see the Wiki entry at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exergy>

An exothermic reaction is one that releases heat; for instance,
combustion. It releases potential energy from the system (the reaction
chamber), and lowers the entropy of the system. The heat, of course, may
be a source of exergy for another system.

That's the best I can do.

I had gotten the implication "exergy" had to do with non informational
energy processing, specifically having to do with transcription:
protein to protein, acid to acid, thus non informational.

Did I come close to one of its applications?

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