Re-Thinking Biology—I. Maxwell’s Demon and the Spontaneous Origin of Life

A hypothesis is advancedin which life began from a Darwinian selection among a diversification ofmolecular species containing the phosphate moiety which broke the constraintsimplicit in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, discussed famously by Schrodinger,by obtaining energy from specific infrared frequencies located in thephosphorus-oxygen vibration at a frequency around 1000 cm-1. We propose thesource of this energy was from the internal conversion of solar broadband energy by the phosphatemineral Apatite, present at the bottom of a primitive biogenesis pond. In thisscenario, life is re-defined as being hotter than its environment and as usingits excess energy, supplied by infra-red conversion, to react with itsmolecular environment and pump itself up the “entropy slope” thereby;replication is through breakages of increasingly large phosphate containingbiopolymers. The idea has implications for modern explanations of livingsystems.