We know that a fast chemical reaction takes place in a femtosecond (10⁻¹⁵ seconds), so the maximum possible number of reactions is 10¹⁶⁰/(10⁻¹⁵ s) = 10¹⁷⁵ reactions/s. (Again, a conservative estimate for the argument: the actual reaction mechanism will be more complicated and the reaction time will be slower.) So the shortest time required to make all our proteins is 10²⁶⁰/10¹⁷⁵ = 10⁸⁵ seconds.

But the age of the universe (time since the big bang) is 14(10⁹) years = 4.4(10¹⁷) s ≈ 10¹⁸ seconds. So, a period 10⁶⁷ times the age of the universe is needed to make all proteins of length 200. Even if Kauffman's estimates are seriously in error (say by a factor of 10⁵⁰), there just hasn't been time for nature to do all that can be done. I find this argument compelling. We know that the variety of life forms on earth is increasing, even while some species go extinct and even though mass extinctions occasionally occur. We know that new viruses are evolving, posing new threats to human health. We know that bacteria and viruses mutate into new forms when confronted with medical treatments that threaten existing forms—when the old ways of making a living no longer work, change how you play the game.

What does this mean for man? For one thing, it means there are many, many more molecules yet to be created than have already been created by nature and man. And each newly created molecule expands not only the biosphere, but it may also expand the economic sphere: it may become a source of new ways for man (as well as other living things) to make a living. One hundred years ago there was no nylon, no rayon, no polyethylene, no polypropylene, no polystyrene, no teflon, no polyvinyl chloride (add your own favorite molecule to the list), but as each of these was created, it spawned new products, new markets, new ways to make a living.

Kauffman goes on to speculate that the rates of expansion of the biosphere and economic sphere are self-regulating. These systems can't get ahead of themselves: there were no refineries in 1800 to make gasoline because there was no need for gasoline then. In 1950 there was no such thing as a mouse for a personal computer because there were no personal computers. But although the expansion of possibilities is restrained, Kauffman suggests that the expansion is as fast as possible, within those constraints. While this is probably true for the biosphere, and for American and Western European economies, I'm not convinced it applies to all economies. There are many societies in the world which have been slow to embrace a high-paced, hard driving economic system. The reasons for this are, of course, several. In some cases a ruling elite seeks to preserve power; in others, an entire society seeks to preserve its traditional culture. So conflicts between "first-world" and "third-world" countries are not necessarily rooted only in skewed distributions of wealth; they may also reflect fears that a traditional culture will be overwhelmed and displaced by incessant change, growth, and "progress." Even in this country there are societies, such as the Amish and Mennonites, who consciously constrain the rate of economic development in their communities.

Perhaps it is worth pushing this argument further. The development of our technology-based society has its roots in the industrial revolution: the point in history when European societies began to change from rural economies to machine-based economies. I suggest that such a transition would not have succeeded without an articulation of the first law of thermodynamics—energy is a conserved quantity: no realization that energy is conserved, no industrial revolution, no modern economy. I will further postulate that no society in the universe can develop a technology-based economy until it has discovered the first law. The first law is absolutely necessary for such a development.

But while the first law is necessary, I'm not convinced it is sufficient: it is not enough to know the law, you also have to apply it. And the fastest growth in applications did not occur in Europe. Consider: In c. 1850 Helmholtz, in Germany, articulates the first law, and work by two generations of European physicists and chemists was clarified and made coherent. But European research continued, by and large, along traditional lines: scientific inquiries into the theoretical underpinnings of their subjects. Sure there were good engineers in Europe too; men like Otto and Diesel and Linde and Rankine. But European societies were too traditional and conservative to exploit all the possibilities that the new technologies were throwing up. That was left to those brash, opportunistic, upstart Americans. Could American engineering have done it without European science? Of course not. Could European engineering have done it without American competition? Yes, but it would have been done differently, more conservatively, more slowly—not, I think, at the fastest rate possible.

Ok, but maybe the discovery of the first law stimulates development of a psychological mind-set that tries to exploit the law as fast as possible? Probably it does for some minds, but apparently not necessarily for enough minds to influence the pace of technological change in a whole society. In fact, American history leads us to believe that the brash, opportunistic mind-set was already well-established in the States long before 1850.

Leaving the issue of the rate of expansion aside, we come to a point of Kauffman's that I think is dead on: the possibilities thrown up by the biosphere and by the economic sphere are expanding, but not all of those new possibilities are predictable. Given that there are fish in the oceans, and knowing the structure, function, and behavior of fish in general, is all that information enough to reasonably expect we could have predicted the existence of flying fish? Could you have predicted that flying fish thrive on this earth? I couldn't. Unlike a fresh-water bass coming out of the water for insects and unlike dolphin leading a ship into harbor, the flight of a flying fish seems, to me, anomalous, exotic, charmed, unpredictable.

It is instructive to read science fiction from the "golden age"—the 1930s and 1940s—stories and novels set 50, 60, or 70 years into their future, our present. Keep in mind many of those stories were written by people who were trained as scientists or engineers (some were practicing their professions), but in any case, they were people who spent a lot of time thinking about the future. Nevertheless, in story after story, by author after author, we have characters navigating space ships using slide rules—the authors routinely failed to predict the existence of electronic calculators, and often they failed to anticipate electronic computers altogether. Kauffman implies that such "failures" are not necessarily lapses by unthinking authors—some portions of the future are unknown because they are unknowable.

• Introductory Page of This Review of Investigations
• §1 A Fourth Law of Thermodynamics?
• §3 A Science of Ethics?

(jmh 05 Sep 06) © 2006 by J. M. Haile. All rights reserved.

Literature Cited

[1] Atkins, P. W., The Second Law, Scientific American Library, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1984.

[2] Shaw, G. Bernard, Maxims for Revolutionists, in Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy, Bretano's, New York, 1905.

[3] Asimov, Isaac, I, Robot, Gnome Press, New York,1950.

[4] Crichton, Michael, Prey, HarperCollins, New York,2002.

[5] Owens, Mark, and Delia Owens, Cry of the Kalahari, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1984.

[6] What Emerson actually wrote was, "Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four," in "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, International Collector's Library, Garden City, NY, 1968, p. 94.

[7] Hanson, N. R., Perception and Discovery: An Introduction to Scientific Inquiry, Freeman, Cooper, San Francisco, 1970, p. 344.