"What is a record ?

    <p class=default>
      
        <b>"What is a record? </b>
      
      
        I believe we must follow the reasonable assumption that the first records were
      
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        in single molecules, since that is the way they occur in modern cells. The essentially new 
        condition in
      
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        this origin of life formulation of the recording or measuring problem is that no human 
        observer, no
      
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        physicist, no philosopher, nor any macroscopic measuring instrument designed by biological 
        organisms
      
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        can exist in the beginning. We imagine only the motions and interactions of the elementary 
        matter, so
      
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        we can only ask, how does matter record its own behavior without the intervention of a 
        physicist. Or in
      
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        other words: How does the motion of matter lead to 
      
      
        <i>records </i>
      
      
        of these motions?
      
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        Someone will probably object that the observer has not really disappeared in this 
        formulation, and
      
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        that I have only hidden the observer by imagining the existence of an objective recording 
        process
      
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        which is operationally meaningless, since it is still the human observer who decides when 
        a record has
      
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        been made. Here I shall simply admit to being a realist, that is, a person who believes 
        that there are
      
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        aspects of the world which exist independent of this observer's description of the world. 
        I must accept
      
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        as a meaningful concept supported by empirical evidence that life did not always exist on 
        the earth, and
      
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        that it was the accumulation and transmission of hereditary records at the molecular level 
        that
      
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        eventually led, only after billions of years, to observers like myself. But I must 
        therefore add-and this is
      
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        the central point- that not only matter, but also 
      
      
        <i>records </i>
      
      
        existed long before physicists started thinking
      
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        about matter and making large measuring devices." (Pattee 1971a,p. 310)
      
      
        
      
    </p>