Of molecules and Men:

All biological objects have highly ordered complexity. The causal mechanism for this is natural
selection.

The minimal requirements for living organisms are:

1. Growth. Therefore, there needs to be a source of free energy and the organism must be an
open system, and can metabolize.
2. Copying

Crick’s reductionistic argument: In principle, all biology can be explained in physics and chemistry.
However, due to practical conveniences, we may need to employ a systems view. He doesn’t believe
that emergent properties are ontologically irreducible to their parts- “Benzene is certainly not an
arithmetical sum of its component parts, but nevertheless a theoretical chemist can deduce its
behaviour by doing the sum the right ay; that is, by using the methods of quantum mechanics”

Everything we have found can be explained without effort in terms of the standard bonds of
chemistry – the homopolar chemical bond, the vander Waal attraction between nonbonded atoms,
the all important hydrogen bonds and so on.

There are 2 explanations that needs to be distinguishes:

1. How can we predict the behaviour of a biological system from its parts?
2. How has the system evolved?

Q1 is predictable; Q2 isn’t (chance).

Crick’s definition of vitalism: “there is some special force directing the growth / behaviour of living
systems, which cannot be understood by our ordinary notions of physics and chemistry”.

Motivation for adopting vitalism: difficulty in understanding complicated behaviours with the
concepts and tools available to us.

3 areas of difficulty:

1. Living vs non living

2. Origin of life
3. Consciousness

Crick’s dismantling of Walter Elsasser’s work: the physical foundation of biology (1958):

- Ignorance of biological facts- e.g. his surprise in finding that the information for the hard
external parts of a lobster is stored in ‘soft’ tissue
- Overestimation of the amount of information needed to build a human being- much
redundant information, and the chromosome can store a lot of information. Therefore, the
mechanist’s position is still tenale.
- Elsasser’s “biotonic phenomena”- additional laws on top of the laws of physics. Reason: too
many possibilities to be averaged over in the timescale available; but this doesn’t imply new
laws- it is compatible with chance effects too.

General arguments can be very misleading when not securely based on intimate scientific
knowledge.

Peter Mora’s 1963 article- Urge and Molecular Biology.

Eugene Wigner’s argument by QM that it is impossible to have a “self-reproducing” system.

Scientists who appeal to vitalism won’t claim the existence of a ‘spirit’ etc. but will claim that
additional laws on top of those of physics and chemistry are operating- but what is the precise
character of these mysterious laws?? E.g. Natural selection, but is NS irreducible to physics and
chemistry?

The simplest living things

Molecules in the cell are either small or large (by polymerization from the small molecules). It is rare
to find complicated, medium-sized molecules.

2 control mechanisms: affecting the function of the enzymes vs affecting the rate of production of
the enzymes themselves.