Richard Dawkins described that genetic information is digital information (1). Digital information corresponds to the binary natural number. A natural number is a set of the natural number one.
Plato described (2) that the natural number one has three features: indivisibility, invariability, equality. Additionally, Plato said that substantial entities, which correspond to natural numbers, are only replicas of Platonic natural numbers. However,
natural selection endowed the highly conserved
DNA sequences with very close properties of the Platonic natural number.
Dawkins says (3) "It bears repeating that the DNA molecules of long-dead animals are not themselves preserved. The information in DNA can be preserved forever, but only by dint of frequent re-copying." According to the
neutral theory of evolution (4), important genes for survival have to be conserved. So
essential genes (5), which are the minimum requirement for survival, are highly conserved among all living organisms throughout evolution. Without natural selection, these genes could not be conserved. Only natural selection can protect information against
entropy (6). Because digital information is the replica of the Platonic natural number, any type of digital information must be able to the target of natural selection. Then, the good digital information must have the close properties of the Platonic natural number.
Any type of digital information is a substantial entity but natural selection can endow digital information with close properties of the Platonic natural number. Because each DNA base is the direct target of natural selection, genetic information is the most typical digital information. Let us consider the alphabet, which is another type of digital information. The alphabetical document can be the target of natural selection. If only one nation had the alphabetical document of the manufacturing method of the most powerful arm, the survival probability of the citizens of the nation would increase. In the case, the document is directly related to human lives.
However, many documents are not directly related to human lives. For example, let us consider the
Bible. Many Christians have read Bible repeatedly from ancient Roman times. Because Bible has been the object of the belief and has been recited, the contents of Bible have been preserved for a long time. This process is similar to natural selection. I shall call this process pseudo-natural selection. By contrast, many classics of ancient Greece were lost. Even
Euclid's Elements contains nonsensical sentences because it was hardly read in the middle ages. That is, a book is not preserved, unless it is read. In conclusion, only digital information, which is the target of natural selection or the target of pseudo-natural selection, can be preserved for a long time.
As I described in "
Natural Selection Protects Information against Entropy", the irreversibility of death is the necessary condition of natural selection. In the primitive earth, when death did not exist, natural selection could not occur. If the death of a life had arisen, natural selection could start. Because the origin of life is unknown, we shall consider a life, which is closer to a present life. Let us consider the unicellular organism, which had the primitive genetic information system and could keep
homeostasis. Homeostasis is the ability of a living organism to keep its internal environment stable. A living organism can recovery minor disturbance of the internal environment. However, i
f homeostasis was irreversibly broken, the rapid decay would start. The process could not be reverse, and then the equilibrium would be reached. That is, the process is death.
Furthermore, the integration of the whole cell is necessary for homeostasis of the unicellular organism. That is, the unicellular organism had to be indivisible. As long as the death of it was irreversible, it could evolve. In early times, unicellular organisms might have the incomplete genetic information system. Natural selection would develop the repair system of their genetic information system, and then their genetic information would be invaluable between a cell division to the next cell division. In the stage, they might develop the mechanism of DNA replication.
Thereafter, natural selection would evolve the DNA replication system. If the DNA replication system had evolved sufficiently, each DNA base of the important gene is indivisible, invariable and equal to each other. Therefore, natural selection can make it to be similar to Plato's one. Furthermore, we can regard the genetic information as the digital information, which represents the environment, because only adapted individuals can survives in the environment.
We can define digital information as the substantial entity, which is the replica of the Platonic number and has the possibility of determining life or death of a living organism. That is, digital information can be the direct target of natural selection. Thus, natural selection can make digital information closer to Plato's number.
References
- Richard Dawkins, The River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Basic Books, 1995.
- Plato, The Republic.
- Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
- Motoo kimura, The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- J. I. Glass, N. Assad-Garcia, N. Alperovich, S. Yooseph, M. R. Lewis, M. Maruf, C. A. Hutchison III, H. O. Smith and J. C. Venter, Essential genes of a minimal bacterium, Proceedings of National Academy of sciences of the USA 103(2): 425-430, 2006.
- Natural Selection Protects Information against Entropy