A Counterpart to the Anthropic Principle:

The Genome Intelligence Principle

In astronomy we have the Anthropic Principle, which is both an observation and a hypothesis that the universe appears to be fine tuned to support life.

I postulate a Genome Intelligence Principle.  It is analogous to the Anthropic Principle, as it both observes and presupposes a higher level of order than mere laws of physics or chance would allow.

The Genome Intelligence Principle begins with the observation that the Genetic Code is not derivable from the laws of physics, but is arbitrary.  All codes we know the origin of are designed; codes by their very nature cannot be accounted for by pure physics and chemistry.  Codes only come from intelligence or prior codes.

The philosophical cornerstone of all successful science is the presumption of underlying order.  Such a presumption is never provable in advance; it is only rewarded after hypotheses have been made and experiments done.

Science must always assume that there is a reason for everything, and history shows us that this assumption is eventually rewarded.

***Thus the mission of science is always to uncover the next undiscovered layer of order.***

Anything less than that is beneath the dignity of science.

Large segments of biology are presently blinded by a materialistic paradigm. This view has no reason to presume underlying order and proactively presupposes disorder.  Thus we have an anti-scientific vandalism of biology through terms such as “Junk DNA.”

Science must raise its sights and expectations to make room for greater discoveries.  The only way to do this is to make highly favorable assumptions about the information content and programming of the genome.

In physics we assume underlying levels of order and discover an apparently endless world of subatomic particles.  In biology we will now similarly hypothesize that genome itself similarly contains virtually endless layers of order and function.

Genome Intelligence extends this observation to hypothesize that most if not all aspects of the genome and its information storage mechanisms are extremely optimal. It represents specific choices among trillions of trillions of available configurations. This design represents a nearly ideal set of parameter tradeoffs, maximizing the integrity of data storage over 3+ billion years of history.

This design ensures that evolution occurs as an engineered process and is achieved in a minimal number of steps. In other words the path from the origin of life 3.5 billion years ago to present humans has been traversed at near-optimum speed.

The four-letter alphabet A/C/G/T is a very particular choice.  It could just as easily be two or four or six or any other number of letters; but the tradeoffs have been analyzed in the literature and we see that a four letter alphabet maximizes data storage for a given amount of space.

The specific table of the 3-letter codon convention has already been shown to be optimal, compared to more than 18,000 other possible arrangements.

Genome Intelligence postulates that evolution itself, far from being inevitable, is only explainable as a programmed adaptation feature.  The genome is pre-programmed with Kaizen (the Japanese term for Continuous Improvement) and the tools to achieve it.

Implications of this are:

• Random mutation, the hero of evolution in the materialistic worldview, is actually the villain.  With only exceedingly rare exceptions, it has no positive role to play in evolution at all.
• Materialistic evolution is believed to be an aimless, purposeless process.  “Teleology” (purpose) is explicitly denied and even forbidden.  Genome Intelligence assumes the total opposite: That evolution is a directed process with predetermined goals, the means of achieving them already in place, and explicit, premeditated purpose.
• The biological world is information-driven and organized top-down, not bottom-up.  Teleology is not only warranted but is a consistently productive and essential assumption.
• The origin of life is explainable only as (1) a deliberate product of external intelligence, or (2) a consequence of a Strong Anthropic Principle such that life itself is the direct result of a profoundly fine-tuned universe.
• All attempts to explain life as a product of chance will continue to fail; and in fact chance itself is an anti-scientific explanation because it is a non-systematic process.  It fails because it fails to presume underlying order.

Both Strong and Weak Genome Intelligence Principle formulations are possible. A Strong Genome Intelligence Principle hypothesizes that humans and other specific life forms are a pre-meditated goal, and the diversity of our ecosystem exists to support human life.

A Weak Genome Intelligence Principle would be less ambitious in its assumptions, predicting that many other scenarios or creatures might have evolved given slightly different initial conditions.

I am open to a variety of outcomes – and the very real possibility that some of these ideas may lead down blind alleys. What’s important is to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Perry Marshall

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