Martin Schweiger is a patent attorney in Singapore who has facilitated thousands of patent cases.  Martin sees more innovations and inventions in a week than most people see in a year. In this article he reviews my book Evolution 2.0 from the perspective of an engineer who asks questions about biology.

Very early in my own exploration of biology, I realized the concept of information in biology is not far from the human concept of Intellectual Property – namely that it’s unique and contextual and never just rote repetition of patterns such as you see in salt crystals. Indeed, information (genetic information but also much more) is essential to ALL novelty in biology, therefore is required for any form of evolution to take place.

In this sense, the patent applicant must prove to the examiner that their invention represents a unique contribution to the evolutionary history of the relevant technology.

Read Martin’s review here.

Quotes from his post:

I have a few books about patenting life science results sitting in my library, and none of them explains what is the big picture. They highlight certain aspects of the process of innovating in the area of working with molecular biology methods and their results. They explain how Transposition, Horizontal Gene Transfer, Epigenetics, Symbiogenesis, Hybridization, and other aspects of Molecular Biology work. But these books say nothing about how these processes work together

Perry wrote his book for people who seemed to have lost faith in the creator behind our daily world. So if you qualify for this group of targets then his book might be the right thing to read. You may find your faith in God again.

Other useful applications are for scientists that believe in Neo-Darwinism. “Neo-Darwinism” means “Evolution being the result of Random Mutation, plus natural selection, plus long times.” Example: T.G. Dhobzhansky with his fruit flies that grew legs out of their heads where antennae belong (pages 30 ff. of Perry’s book).

The finding would be that the Neo-Darwinism model is wrong if you follow Perry’s evaluation: Neo-Darwinism will get you nowhere. Random mutation is noise. Noise destroys.

Instead, better follow “Evolution Version 2.0” which is “Adaptive Mutation, plus natural selection, plus short time”. That thinking model will get you somewhere useful, as compared with the Neo-Darwinism model.

This book is a must-read if you are interested in things that go beyond your own life on earth. The quest is: who is beyond all this? And why? And how?

If the book gave me answers then why will it not give answers to you?

Please read it, you will like it. I promise!

Read Martin’s full review here:

Book Review: Perry Marshall – Evolution, Version 2.0

Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0 and founder of the $10 million prize for the origin of a spontaneously arising communication system, joins Glen Reuschling, retired engineer, and Karen Wong to discuss the fundamental nature of information, choice, and the observer.

Perry Marshall and Stephen Meyer on Unbelievable

Perry Marshall, Denis Noble and Lee Cronin on Unbelievable

Karen Wong has a longtime interest in origins and evolution and we discuss what happens when you shift the definition of evolution. Old definition: Changes in gene frequencies acted upon by natural selection. New definition: Self-awareness at fractal levels of scale.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfgECbMnQOc

Podcast: https://evo2.org/podcasts/rocking-the-foundations-of-evolution/

Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall Biology Transcends the Limits of Computation by Perry Marshall: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science… 

The Importance of Henry H. Heng’s Genome Architecture Theory by R. Furst:

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer: https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-… 

Perry’s conversation with Azra Raza about cancer: https://youtu.be/W2tbSS2dp9o 

Cancer and Evolution Symposium with James Shapiro and Denis Noble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nVJ…

Why water is essential to life possessing the ability to choose, by Denis Noble of Oxford:

Life begins and depends on the strange physical and chemical properties of water. This lecture by Denis Noble was delivered to a Biology Congress in Iran in 2022. In simple language it shows why water is crucial to our ability to exercise free action in choosing our actions and in being creative. The lecture ends with a plea: water resources in many part of the world are threatened by global warming, while in other parts of the world people and animals are threatened by massive flooding. Recognising how important water is to life, and why that is so, is a major step towards convincing people and nations around the world to take action to prevent the catastrophes that threaten life on earth.

Glen Reuschling writes:

I’ve taken the opportunity to read, then reread several times, your recent paper “Biology transcends the limits of computation” (2021). I’m confused. Wouldn’t a working solution to your prize challenge effectively disprove the assertion of the paper’s title?

So, inquiring minds want to know, are you offering the prize challenge because you don’t believe a solution is possible? In which case it represents a sort of put-up-or-shut-up challenge to your Neo-Darwinists critics.

Or do you in fact believe a solution is possible? In which case the prize should be taken as incentive for someone to commit their own creative energy working actively for a solution. Or is there third possibility I’m missing?

~

Response: What a wonderful question. A working solution would disprove my paper IF that solution only uses known properties of physics and chemistry.

But I don’t believe our current, conventional understanding of physics and chemistry will ever solve origin of life or even account for the “aliveness” of life. We are missing something. Whatever this thing is, it is very fundamental. More fundamental than gravity.

If there are “undiscovered laws of physics,” in other words if consciousness is an emergent property of matter due to principles we don’t understand (NOW); or perhaps consciousness is a more primary entity that the cosmos itself is grounded in. And this, once understood, enables us to build systems that exhibit negentropy… that would both validate the paper AND solve the prize.

That is where I think the truth lies.

There are two ways to speak about ’emergent properties’: One is when we understand and observe them regularly (like cold air + water = snowflakes); the other is when we don’t, so we just utter the words “emergent property” as a fill-in for something we’ve never directly observed and don’t understand, i.e. “Life emerged from hot vents in the ocean.”

I do believe a solution is possible. And as my paper suggests, science has gotten cause and effect entirely backwards, so we have to take a very different, non-reductionist view of science in order to solve any of this. I offer several fruitful avenues of exploration here: https://evo2.org/ways-to-win/

Meanwhile the prize underscores the fact that we don’t have a clue where the genetic code came from; 95% of the literature is just-so stories.

Joana Xavier is a rising star in the Origin of Life field. She is a researcher at University College London. She recently authored a paper with Stuart Kauffman on autocatalytic networks which are nature’s version of M.C. Escher’s hand drawing a hand. We discuss the uneasy relationship between professional scientists and Intelligent Design and then go on to discuss conflicts in academia, science funding and publishing.

Joana’s Website: https://jcxavier.org/
Joana’s paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsta.2021.0244

Podcast: https://evo2.org/podcasts/the-biggest-mystery-in-the-history-of-the-universe/

When Perry’s brother quit his missionary job and abandoned his Christian faith, this plunged Perry into a deep crisis of questioning everything himself. He decided to put Christian beliefs on the biggest public anvil he could find and invite the whole world to swing a hammer.

This became an email list of two hundred and fifty thousand people, millions of website visitors, and seven years in the largest atheist discussion board in the world. In this talk, Perry describes his journey through the darkness and what was left after the smoke cleared.

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDmpREKhzR4

There are very very few people who can slice through the jargon of molecular biology and explain how cells talk to each other in a way that a highschool student can understand. But Jon Lieff has done exactly that and his book, NAME, is a guided tour of a microscopic world that is bursting with life… and stories…This book may change the way you see everything.

Podcast Link: https://evo2.org/podcasts/an-invisible-world-buzzing-with-communication-and-excitement-jon-lieff-md/

Jon Lieff’s Website: https://jonlieffmd.com/

Jon Lieff’s Book: The Secret Language of Cells

Interview with Damien Deighan of Data Science Conversations: In this episode we are joined by Perry Marshall to talk about his latest scientific paper entitled “Biology Transcends the Limits of Computation”. We also discuss his $10 million Evolution 2.0 Science Prize, which is the largest prize in the world in science currently.

His paper – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610721000365 – pushes the boundaries in the field of evolutionary biology and his science prize is driving some truly fascinating and thought provoking implications for the development of strong AI.

Podcast link: https://datascienceconversations.com/podcasts/perry-marshall-why-evolutionary-biology-has-big-implications-for-future-ai-development/

Rich Jacobs indulged his fascination with technology by starting a podcast called Finding Genius. He didn’t know that it would end up taking him into hundreds of specialties in science, technology, and medicine.

His book titled Finding Genius: Understanding Viruses: 30 Questions, 25 Geniuses, 100 Amazing Insights is a beautifully edited compilation of Q&A from some of the best virus people in the world. Here we explore what Rich discovered about viruses and their experts.

Podcast link: https://evo2.org/podcasts/viruses-and-what-rich-jacobs-discovered-from-interviewing-3000-experts/