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| Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) |
Live mechanisms and information in DNA are boundary conditions with a sequence of boundaries above them.
So the machine as a whole works under the control of two distinct principles. The higher one is the principle of the machine's design, and this harnesses the lower one, which consists in the physical-chemical processes on which the machine relies.
Mechanisms, whether man-made or morphological, are boundary conditions harnessing the laws of inanimate nature being themselves irreducible to those laws. The pattern of organic bases in DNA which functions as a genetic code is a boundary condition irreducible to physics and chemistry. Further controlling principles of life may be represented as a hierarchy of boundary conditions extending, in the case of man, to consciousness and responsibility.
Michael Polanyi (Life's Irreducible Structure)
