Brian
> is right on the mark. This is a fundamental result from
> information theory proven first, if I remember correctly,
> by Chaitin, one of the founders of algorithmic information
> theory.
Chris
Actually, the opposite is true. Laws are information-rich. That's their
purpose: To compact vast amounts of information into a mentally manageable
form. The law of gravity is equivalent to billions upon billions of
observations. Of course, life still needs a medium (i.e., matter and energy,
or their equivalents (disk space, processor time, etc.)), and it is true
that we could not specify by means of any reasonable set of laws the details
of how life will be at some remote future time, as we might with the
positions of the planets. But this is admitting that the "laws" don't
contain *all* relevant information (the positions of all subatomic particles
and so on) for any "initial conditions."
Presumably the phrase "information-rich" is intended to mean that life
somehow transcends physics and chemistry. But what it suggests is that
physics and chemistry are richer than anti-materialists would like them to
be: Life is "contained" the subatomic particles, as far as we can tell
scientifically: A sufficiently accurate "picture" of the behavior of
subatomic particles and electromagnetic energy, etc., would presumably
enable a sufficiently well-programmed (and sufficiently powerful) computer
to "predict" the evolution of life (not in the details, but in general
features, such as that life on Earth would eventually produce at least one
species capable of scientifically studying life).
Is that a "recipe" for life? I don't know, but it seems close enough to me.
Further, since, as work at various places (such as the Santa Fe Institute)
shows, the conditions for evolution, and even life, can be created by human
action, almost exactly (at least abstractly) as a person might make a pie,
this claim seems a tad "post-mature" (to put it politely).
To me, it appears to be yet another holdover from the "Žlan vitale" theory
of life, the idea that life is somehow "mysterious," and radically different
from other processes that occur in the physical world (i.e., combustion,
etc.).