In religious thermodynamics, genopsych, a conjunction of geno- (genetics) + -psyche (mind), is a hypothetical anti-entropy (or entropy antonym) conceptualized, said to be extensive psychological-thermodynamic property, entity posted to operate counter to entropy, reasoned to give directionality to the process of evolution, to cause non-random variations in the genome, indicative of information creation, is said to be the basis of native intelligence of plants, microorganisms, such as bacteria, and DNA, and is supposed to be god or a part of god inside of humans that has evolved people to their present form. [1]
Overview
In 2007, Indian chemical engineer DMR Sekhar, in an attempt to reconcile evolution, genetics, Hinduism, Christianity, and the second law of thermodynamics, conceived his so-called genopsych model, according to which he hypothesized a entropic type of genetic psychology; the logic of which stems, according to Sekhar, to the 1983 work of Russian biophysicist Mikhail Volkenshtein who stated, in respect to Chargaff’s rules (Ѻ), that: [2]
“The replacement of the pair A-T by G-C is evidently thermodynamically favorable since G is bound to C more strongly than A to T. If it were for thermodynamics alone, the relative G-C content in DNA should have increased during the evolution.”
On this statement, Sekhar reasoned that, if it is not thermodynamics alone then there must exist a further explanation to account for evolution in light of genetic mechanism.
Sekhar also finds similar point of view in the off-quoted statistical argument that the second law only holds in most cases. Sekhar cites British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s 1987 statement that “the second law of thermodynamics has a rather different status than that of other laws of science, such as Newton’s law of gravity, for example, because it does not hold always, just in the vast majority of cases.” [3] An argument which reasons that in a system governed by the Boltzmann chaos assumption all states will have equal probability, thus implying that an ordered state may be the outcome of a disordered system by some probability or that “the self-compression of a gas is not absolutely impossible”. [4]
Difficulties
The central difficulties of Sekhar’s genopsych theory, aside from the obvious argument for god proposition, are firstly that he assumes the second law doesn’t hold in the biosphere, in his own words “the formation of ordered molecules such as DNA is impossible if the classical version of the second law of thermodynamics prevails”, and secondly his view that smaller life-like molecular structures, such as genes, bacteria, microorganisms, plants, etc., are conscious and struggle to exist.
On the first issue, Sekhar seems to have a limited understanding of the chemical thermodynamics application of "systems" in the studies of the biosphere, e.g. he relies on the verbal isolated systems view and the disorder connection of ideal gas phase systems in his discussions of evolution. On the second issue, if he is to argue that smaller molecular life forms, such as bacteria (i.e. a bacterial molecule) or DNA (i.e. a genetic molecule, C10H16O13N5P3), etc., are conscious, than according to the logic of molecular evolution tables, which show an evolutionary descendency to the hydrogen atom, one also has to prove that all molecules, e.g. the hydrogen ion molecule, H2, as well as that the hydrogen atom, are conscious, an argument that leads to numerous absurdities. [5]
See also
● Genetic entropy
● Gentropy
References
1. (a) Sekhar, DMR. (2007). "On the Incompatibilities of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Primary Instincts, Natural Selection, and the Properties of DNA." (8-pages). Submitted as article proposal to the Journal of Human Thermodynamics.
(b) Genopsych – DMR Sekhar talk page (Wikiversity).
(c) Sekhar, DMR. (2009). “Genpsy: Genopsych – the self programmability of genome”, Google Knol, January.
(d) Sekhar, DMR. (2007). "Genopsych and the God", Blog, July, 16.
(e) Sekhar, DMR. (2007). “Genopsych: Some aspects on Philosophy”, Dmrsekhar Blogs, Sulekha.com, July 26.
(f) Sekhar, DMR. (2007). “Genopsych: Some Aspects of Philosophy”, Sulekha.com, 26 July.
2. Volkenshtein, Mikhail V. (1983). Biophysics. Moscow: MIR Publishers.
3. Hawking, Stephen Hawking. (1987). A Brief History of Time. Toronto: Bantam Books
4. Yeremin, E.N. (1983). Fundamentals of Chemical Thermodynamics. Moscow: MIR Publishers.
5. Thims, Libb. (2008). The Human Molecule, (preview). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
