#3 The big idea

I think I’m nearly ready to present my big idea to the world.  This is it:

That, in essence, evolution is based on increasing disorder, a running down.  At the genetic level dysfunction increases over time.  The reason for this is that mutations are errors in the replication of DNA.  These errors cause genes to become switched off.  This represents a loss of information carried by the genetic code.

However, and this is a very big however, switched-off genes can be useful in that they can give rise to modifications in traits that bring about adaptation to new environments.  When switched-off genes are useful because the modifications they produce are beneficial, they are positively selected by natural selection.

There are hundreds of examples of plants and animals that have modifications such as reduction in structures and organs that are missing such as moles which have no eyes.  All these examples are underpinned by mutation causing genes to cease to function.  There are also all sorts of modifications that have led to the evolution of a great diversity of species.

This is the grand principle of evolution that sprang from the dust of a shanty town.  Error causes loss of information in the genetic code and this is passed on. 

I conceived this principle in my mind, but I had no name for it.  Then, one day I read the appendix of a book that spoke of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  I realized that the name for my principle was entropy.  But this is not entropy involving the running down of energy, but the running down of information in a code that is a transmitted message.  I now name this Error Entropy (this notion of entropy is different to Shannon Entropy).  It gave the name to my theory: Entropic Evolution.

Here is the bigger idea:  if Entropic Evolution in essence runs down, then there must a proceeding phase when it is ‘wound up’.