Oparin's Century-Old Natural Law Is Enough. No New Natural Law Is Needed.
ROBERT MICHAELS CEO and consulting toxicologist RAM TRAC Corporation Schenectady, New York, USA
Lazcano’s (2024) commemoration of the heterotrophic theory of the origin of life is timely beyond being the centenary of Aleksandr Oparin’s famous theory. Lazcano specifically commemorates Oparin’s application of evolution including natural selection to chemistry, biochemistry, and eventually to life, thereby clarifying a current controversy recently addressed in Science Magazine by Voosen (2024, 8 November). Voosen reported growing support for a proposed new natural law that would apply evolution beyond the province of biology, to provinces that include chemistry, even though Oparin proposed this a century ago.
The proposed new natural law would apply to mineralogy, chemistry, fusion, and beyond, as suggested in 2008 by mineralogist Robert Hazen based upon increasing richness and complexity in these additional provinces. Hazen and Wong (2024) used one of these new provinces, mineralogy, as a case study illustrating this natural “Law of Increasing Functional Information,” which views evolution “as a process of increasing information that is driven by selective pressures [and] is not derivable from the Second Law of Thermodynamics increase in entropy.” The proposed law, apart from being derivative, actually is a corollary embodied within the Second Law of Thermodynamics, proposed two centuries ago (by Sadi Carnot in 1824).
The Second Law states that entropy (disorder) increases in closed systems. However, closed systems, which essentially are completely isolated compartments of open systems, are hard to find, or even to imagine. The whole universe might be the closest system to a completely closed system. The Second Law corollary, that entropy may decrease (complexity may increase) in open systems, therefore dominates among Second Law observables. Self-organization, order, information, and complexity all may accumulate in non-isolated compartments of open systems. All such complexity increases, however, are (at least) compensated by increased entropy (disorder) of the universe outside of such relatively information-rich compartments.
Within their mutual realms of applicability, all natural laws must agree. Accordance of the proposed natural law with the Second Law therefore is a necessary but insufficient condition for acceptance. Unfortunately, the proposed law also conflicts with the Theory of Evolution, which explicitly predicts selection for increased fitness, not for increased complexity. The fittest entities sometimes (maybe usually) are more complex, but exceptions exist, such as degeneracy of many parasites. Further, evolution is not directional, but adaptive, reactively selecting for survival of entities that had (that is, retrospectively) proved fittest in their particular environments. Environments fluctuate, however, potentially resulting in reciprocating selection, and in survival of sequential adaptations of increased or of decreased complexity. If the proposed law is to be accepted, its fundamental complexity-vs.-fitness conflict with evolution must be reconciled.
Increasing complexity may be perceived mistakenly to conflict with time’s arrow, and with the familiar (think Humpty Dumpty) decay of ordered states toward disorder. The Second Law, in contrast, actually predicts growth of complexity in disordered open systems, specifically at the interface between an energy source and an energy sink. As two examples, life may have evolved in nutrient-rich ponds on land or in hydrothermal vents at sea. Land (and atmosphere) constitute an open system situated at the interface (surface) between an energy source (the sun) and an energy sink (the earth). Likewise, hydrothermal vents are situated at the (warm) interface between an energy source (Earth’s hot core) and an energy sink (Earth’s cold oceans).
Invoking this principle in the early 1970s, Margulis and Lovelock advanced the Gaia hypothesis. It proposed that “the climate and chemical composition of the Earth's surface environment is, and has been, regulated in a state tolerable for the biota” (Lovelock 1989). That is, Earth’s benign suitability for life is the complex product of evolution from prebiotic planet-forming chaos to increased present-day planetary complexity. Such benign, purposive whole-Earth regulation, though perhaps compatible with the Second Law, remains (for other reasons) at best controversial, especially in the apparent absence of natural selection of Earth as the fittest planet, as in evolutionary competition of planets.
Evolution in biology and chemistry can be expanded to mineralogy and fusion technologies, if not to “everything else.” All, however, are generally predicted and specifically constrained by the Second Law. For example, fusion power plants exemplify successive approximation toward functionality, mediated by competing technology proposals and demonstration plants. Such competition initially selected for complex and expensive plants (such as ITER in France), but more recently has favored simpler technologies. That is, like biological fitness, technological fitness embodies efficiency and economy of design. In general, selective (evolutionary) and non-selective provinces evolve toward and/or away from complexity in accordance with the same long-known natural laws.
Literature 1. M. Hazen, M. L. Wong. PNAS Nexus 3:248-255, 2024; 2. A. Lazcano. Science 386(6726):1098-1099, 2024; 3. J. Lovelock. Reviews of Geophysics 27(2):215-222, 1989; 4. P. Voosen. Science 386(6722):608-609, 2024.
Publication citation
Michaels, RA. Oparin's century-old natural law is enough. No new natural law is needed. Response to Lazcano, On the origins of organisms, Science 386(6726):1098-9, 2024; eLetter, online 21 January 2025;