Indeed, to say that the processes that natural laws describe can generate functionally specified informational sequences betrays a confusion of categories. Laws are the wrong kind of entity to generate the informational features of life. To look to the laws of nature to generate information is to search for the improbable and specific where it is least likely to be found: in the domain of the recurring and the general. And yet some scientists say we must await the discovery of new natural laws to explain the origin of biological information. German chemist Manfred Eigen has argued that “our
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