The Two-Step Process That Creates Information Structures in the Universe Also Creates the Ideas in Our Minds By Bob (Robert O.) Doyle,
[email protected], Associate, Astronomy Department, Harvard University A paper prepared for a special issue of Physics of Life Review on the Physics of Mind Abstract: We trace the creation of information structures in the universe from the appearance of elementary particles in the first few minutes through the creation and evolution of the galaxies, stars, and planets that began four hundred million years after the origin. All these cosmological information structures are passive, under the control of fundamental physical forces like gravitation, electromagnetism, and the nuclear strong and weak force. Information, per se, is not involved in their creation. With the emergence of life on Earth, relatively soon after the formation of the Sun, active information structures appeared, which we define as structures using information processing and communication to manage the flow of matter and energy through themselves. Active information structures introduced agency and the appearance of purpose. From the tiny molecular machines that are the active components of our cells (for example, ATP synthase, the ion pumps in our neurons, the flagella, ribosomes and their chaperones, and the central dogma of DNA > RNA > Protein) up to the thinking human mind, we trace an evolutionary development that depended at every stage 1) on quantum physics as the generator of new possibilities and 2) the radiation away from the new structure of the excess positive entropy, without which the new information (negative entropy) could not survive.