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This penetrating essay develops a scientific theory of biological
organization starting with the initial creative accident which marked the origin
of life. It is the first step in a theory that the author had intended to extend
to other levels of organization. Henry Quastler was a research biologist whose
application of mathematical ideas to biology was among his greatest contributions,
and it was in the course of this work that he became involved in relating the
concepts of information theory to problems of cell structure and of the creation
and transmission of information in living systems. Here he postulates the construction
of an automaton which could produce "something akin to the noblest act of
human consciousness, the creation of new information." He finds this eventuality
not frightening but reassuring. "It establishes the possibility of the creation
of new information... by an organism much simpler than man, even by a single cell,
and even by a prebiological macromolecular system." At
the time of his death in 1963, Mr. Quastler was on the research staff at Brookhaven
National Laboratory. |
