What Does It Take to Build Improbable Structures?

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What Does It Take to Build Improbable Structures?
Improbable structures are complex, but as Orgel (1973) argued, although necessary, complexity is not a sufficient condition for biological improbable structures. Unlike inorganic structures, biological structures are specified structures that cannot arise by chance. Although it is very difficult to define what an improbable structure is, human beings have some idea about it, and an intuitive definition of an improbable structure would be “a complex specified structure that cannot arise spontaneously, without some kind of biological, unconscious, or conscious, effort.” The more ordered a structure becomes, the more improbable it becomes.

The production of improbable structures of high structural order involves antientropic processes. For such processes to occur, some kind of work needs to be done, implying that free energy must be used. The relatively abundant sources of free energy are constantly doing work on the Earth’s surface and interior. But despite the huge amount of energy the nature discharges on Earth, there is no obvious increase in the inanimate world’s order, although quasi-improbable ephemeral (transient) structures arise in nature. And the reason is simple: the work done by natural forces is undirected.

Nature’s Artworks Ordered structures sometimes arise in nature because of the actions of the various
sources of energy, such as sea waves, winds, and rivers. Spontaneous forces of nature, such as orogenic activity (formation of mountains) and erosion, may also “create” different kinds of order, such as the undulating traces created by sea waves on beach sand, oval pebbles on riverbeds, or the Balanced Rock in Arches National Park, Utah . From a human aesthetical perspective, we call them
“nature’s artworks.”

As pointed out earlier, Maxwell’s demon’s work is goal-directed, and the result of its work is predictable; the order of the system will increase. That is, the gas in one part of the system will be hotter than in the other. In contrast, no “goal” motivates the actions of natural forces; hence the result of their actions is unpredictable. The randomness of the action of natural forces in a world dominated by entropyincreasing processes reduces the probability of the spontaneous rise of improbable
structures in the inorganic world. Wasteful in terms of its colossal forces, inanimate nature has only a slim chance of producing improbable structures, and even when such structures arise, the degree of their complexity is only moderate. Despite the aesthetical values of “nature’s artworks,” it is virtually impossible that the process

of orogenesis (formation of mountains) could create Mount Rushmore. Nature’s artworks are not a match for the ordered structures created by humans.

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