Control Systems in the Living World - Building the Most Complex Structure on Earth - page 13

free energy to do the necessary work to synthesize polysaccharides and protein mol-
ecules. For living systems, the acquisition of the external order would be worthless
if they did not “know” how to convert it into usable form. As an old Albanian adage
says: Knowing trumps having.
What Does It Take to Build Improbable Structures?
Improbable structures are complex, but as Orgel (1973) argued, although necessary,
complexity is not a sufficient condition for biological improbable structures. Unlike
inorganic structures, biological structures are specified structures that cannot arise by
chance. Although it is very difficult to define what an improbable structure is, human
beings have some idea about it, and an intuitive definition of an improbable struc-
ture would be “a complex specified structure that cannot arise spontaneously, with-
out some kind of biological, unconscious, or conscious, effort.” The more ordered a
structure becomes, the more improbable it becomes.
The production of improbable structures of high structural order involves antien-
tropic processes. For such processes to occur, some kind of work needs to be done,
implying that free energy must be used. The relatively abundant sources of free
energy are constantly doing work on the Earth's surface and interior. But despite the
huge amount of energy the nature discharges on Earth, there is no obvious increase
in the inanimate world's order, although quasi-improbable ephemeral (transient)
structures arise in nature. And the reason is simple: the work done by natural forces
is undirected.
Nature's Artworks
Ordered structures sometimes arise in nature because of the actions of the vari-
ous sources of energy, such as sea waves, winds, and rivers. Spontaneous forces of
nature, such as orogenic activity (formation of mountains) and erosion, may also
“create” different kinds of order, such as the undulating traces created by sea waves
on beach sand, oval pebbles on riverbeds, or the Balanced Rock in Arches National
Park, Utah ( Figure 1.7 ). From a human aesthetical perspective, we call them
“nature's artworks.”
As pointed out earlier, Maxwell's demon's work is goal-directed, and the result
of its work is predictable; the order of the system will increase. That is, the gas in
one part of the system will be hotter than in the other. In contrast, no “goal” moti-
vates the actions of natural forces; hence the result of their actions is unpredictable.
The randomness of the action of natural forces in a world dominated by entropy-
increasing processes reduces the probability of the spontaneous rise of improbable
structures in the inorganic world. Wasteful in terms of its colossal forces, inanimate
nature has only a slim chance of producing improbable structures, and even when
such structures arise, the degree of their complexity is only moderate. Despite the
aesthetical values of “nature's artworks,” it is virtually impossible that the process