Nice, but does it reproduce?

Millions of people turn on the ignition of their cars every day and have little idea of what it is they are setting in motion.

Nor do they really need to know, for the successful navigation of the modern car requires the simplest of co-operative actions involving the eyes, hands, feet and, of course, the brain, aided by elementary information-providing instruments in the form of the speedometer (measures wheel rotation), a revolution counter (engine rotation), temperature (engine coolant temperature) and the fuel gauge.

Many other measuring instruments are possible, but these are what carmakers think are essential for the modern driver to use. In the age of expert knowledge we have deferred to engineers the knowledge of how the car works.

A deeper understanding of the engineering of the modern car and the principles of physics and chemistry on which it is based help enormously in using and maintaining the car properly, of applying the tens to hundreds of actions in a single drive with the knowledge of how it all works and hangs together. Mechanical things are easily abused as a result of ignorance, compromising thereby their market value, reliability, durability and lifespan. There are the simple things of not, for example, in a car with manual transmission, unnecessarily slipping a clutch and prematurely wearing it down; or having a car in the right gear at the right moment in order not to either labour or exceed the top-end capacity of the internal combustion engine, compromising its efficiency and shortening its life; or using both the gears and brakes to decelerate the vehicle, saving on the brake-pad wear; and there are many other examples beyond normal maintenance of how a deeper knowledge of how things work can make you a good driver and take better care of what is after all a human piece of engineering.

There was a time when such knowledge would allow you to fix a car if it broke down, but car makers today tend to make engines inaccessible by sealing them off to anyone except the professionals with their computerised diagnostic machines.

The car is an accessible manner of introducing the more complex topic of how biological systems like the human body works. Like any other piece of human engineering the car has a plan. Indeed, there are four plans.

Firstly, to start with the user, you and I, there is a plan called a manual found in the cubby hole that provides basic information about car functions and maintenance requirements.

Secondly, to repair a car an amateur or professional mechanic would need a detailed repair manual, usually supplied by the manufacturer or produced by a mechanics’ publishing agency.

Thirdly, the assembly plan for the car would no doubt be found at the assembly plant as it would, with likely similar if not the same specifications, at other assembly facilities worldwide.

And fourthly, the master design and engineering plan would be lodged somewhere at the car manufacturers’ headquarters. Perhaps the design plans are to be found somewhere else for, in the age of globalised production, it is so that the plans for a single model car may have dispersed geographical locations. Still, the point is that for every humanly engineered machine, from the lowliest device to the flying machines of advanced aeronautics, the product has a hierarchy of plans, somewhere, giving the specifications for how the thing is to be made, function and maintained.

The genome is also a plan as it contains the specifications for how organisms are designed, manufactured and how they function. And so what kind of a plan is it?

We would be hard pressed to equate the genome to the car’s high-level design plan. I say this because heredity happens and does not have an outcome or result that can be conceived of before the time.

The genome resembles best the car’s assembly plan, a highly organised manner of putting an organism together, make it grow and develop, make it function, and then, to let it die a natural death.

All the instructions (the bio-information) to do these tasks of life and natural death are to be found written in the genome code. It is the only complex system we know of where the code for making of the thing is found inside the thing.

The cosmos or weather has no equivalent.