Friday, August 1, 2008

Life does not defeat chaos, but outwits by wisdom (or information)

Life beat the odds of chaos over cosmos, but not by defeating the second law of thermodynamics. Nothing does that. Life wins by outwitting the second law. The chemistry of a biological cell is the same as the chemistry that forms sodium chloride. One set of rules for all. But unlike sodium chloride, which follows the rules by rote, life has somehow gotten hold of wisdom, of information, that taught it to take energy from its environment, to concentrate that energy, and with it to build and maintain the meaningful complexity of the biological cell.
- From Gerald Schroeder's Hidden Face of God, p. 59.