George Gilder

Evolution and Me

"The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain information reflects Shannon's concept of entropy and his measure of 'news'. Information is defined by its independence from physical determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing all nature to material causes."

"Crick expounded and enshrined what he called the 'Central Dogma' of molecular biology. The Central Dogma shows that influence can flow from the arrangement of the nucleotides on the DNA molecule to the arrangement of amino acids in proteins, but not from proteins to DNA. ... DNA is a neutral carrier of information, independent of its chemistry and physics... As the Central Dogma ordains and information theory dictates, the DNA program is discrete and digital, and its information is transferred through chemical carriers - but it is not specified by chemical forces. Each unit of biological information is passed on according to a digital program - a biological code- that is transcribed and translated into amino acids."