Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

Isaac Newton (1687)¹

I have become convinced that life everywhere must be based primarily upon carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen upon an organic chemistry therefore much as on the Earth; and that it can arise only in an environment rich in water.

George Wald (1964)²

What really interests me is whether God could have created the world differently?

Albert Einstein (c. 1925)³

In this essay I will describe some remarkable examples of elegance and parsimony in the fitness of the properties of matter for life. These are not widely appreciated but they provide for me personally some of the most compelling evidence for intelligent design in the natural world.

The Mobility of the Four Atoms

Making up 90 percent of living matter, the four key atoms of life are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (C, H, O, and N). One example of elegance and parsimony in the fine-tuning of the properties of matter is manifest in the way these atoms are so readily distributed and made available for incorporation into carbon-based life throughout the biosphere. This essential end, vital if carbon-based life is to exist and thrive on Earth (or any Earth-like watery planet), is achieved not as one might expect by analogy with human artifice through the services of several complex delivery mechanisms (Newton’s “superfluous causes”). Instead, it is achieved through the properties of the atoms themselves or through the properties of simple molecular combinations with other members of the chosen four. 

In the case of oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N), these are both soluble gases and hence readily available to serve various biological ends and functions wherever there is water, the matrix in which all life on Earth is instantiated. Dissolved oxygen is directly absorbed from water into the blood in the gills of fish and from oxygen gas in the alveoli into the blood in the lungs of air-breathers. Dissolved nitrogen is converted to another soluble substance, ammonia (NH₃), for incorporation into biomatter⁴ which is made up of a simple combination of two of the four atoms, N and H. In the case of the carbon atom, universal availability throughout the biosphere is achieved by its carriage in another soluble gas, carbon dioxide (CO₂). Remarkably, the latter is again formed simply by a combination of two of the four chosen atoms, carbon and oxygen. The incorporation of both C and O into biomatter is mainly via CO₂ as occurs in photosynthesis. In the case of hydrogen (H) this atom is readily available throughout the biosphere, being a constituent of water (H₂O), which is again formed by a simple combination of two of the four key atoms, H and O. Hydrogen atoms are incorporated into biomatter in photosynthesis along with CO₂.

So, in effect it is the actual properties of the four atoms themselves or the properties of simple molecular combinations of the four atoms which enable their distribution and ready availability for biochemistry. The sheer plenitude of life on Earth and its presence in nearly every part of the hydrosphere gives ample testimony to the fitness of the properties of the four building blocks of organic matter for ease of distribution to and subsequent utilization in every corner of the biosphere. For their mobility and distribution, nothing is needed beyond the properties of the four atoms themselves and the properties of the simplest imaginable molecular combination of them. There is no need for what Newton called extraneous “superfluous causes.” 

The Higher Molecular Architecture of Life

Another example of the fine-tuning of the properties of matter for carbon-based life is the remarkable way in which the hydrogen bond and the hydrophobic force play such a vital role in determining much of the higher order architecture of the biomatter in the cell, arising spontaneously from the basic properties of the same four atoms themselves. 

The Hydrogen Bond

Consider first the hydrogen bond. Its great importance in determining and stabilizing the higher order structures of biomacromolecules was recognized and stressed by Pauling in his classic The Nature of the Chemical Bond.⁵Hydrogen bonds occur when one hydrogen atom is attracted to or, as Pauling described it, “shared by” two atoms.⁶Hydrogen bonds are ubiquitous in biomolecules, in alpha helices, in beta sheets, and in double-stranded nucleic acid polymers. No other weak chemical bond has the characteristics of the hydrogen bond which is many times stronger on average than the other weak bonds.⁷ Without the hydrogen bond it is difficult to envisage a biochemistry remotely comparable to that manifest in the familiar carbon-based cell. 

So how are hydrogen bonds formed? From some complex artifice external to the atoms themselves? NO! Their formation arises directly from the differing electronegativity — “attraction to electrons” — of three of the four key atoms, H, O, and N. Oxygen and nitrogen are very much more electronegative than hydrogen. Consequently, in O-H and N-H bonds, the O and N atoms become negatively charged while the hydrogen atom becomes positively charged. Hence a hydrogen atom may be attracted to (or shared by) two adjacent nitrogen or oxygen atoms, i.e., O-H-N, N-H-N, or O-H-O. 

Only three atoms — oxygen, nitrogen, and fluorine — can form hydrogen bonds strong enough to function in the cell.⁸ Of these three, only oxygen and nitrogen are available for biochemistry, as fluorine forms a very strong covalent bond with carbon leading to the formation of toxic “forever compounds.” These are essentially nondegradable in biological systems.⁹ And it is the fitness of O and N in forming hydrogen bonds that is one of the key reasons for the inclusion of N and O and H among the “chosen four” atoms for the assembly of biomatter.

So, these vital bonds, which play such an important role in determining the higher order structure of macromolecules, are not generated as one might expect by some “clever device” external to the three atoms H, O, and N. Instead, they arise spontaneously with parsimonious elegance from the intrinsic properties of the three atoms themselves. 

The Hydrophobic Force

Another vital force involved in generating many of the higher order structures in the cell is the hydrophobic force. This force is responsible for excluding non-polar hydrophobic compounds and hydrophobic parts of compounds such as chains of hydrocarbons as well as other hydrophobic structures from the aqueous phase in the cell. This causes the spontaneous assembly of the lipid bilayer cell membrane (one of the most important organelles in the cell) and that of many other membranes (such as the membrane surrounding the mitochondria and nucleus) and the hydrophobic core in the center of proteins (a cluster of hydrophobic, i.e. hydrocarbon-containing, amino acid side chains). The latter plays a critical role in folding and stabilizing the native form of proteins.¹⁰ The hydrophobic force also stabilizes the double helical nature of DNA.¹¹ 

The great protein chemist Charles Tanford stressed the importance of the hydrophobic force in the cell:¹² 

Though diverse factors are involved in determining the precise specificity of molecular interactions in biology, the hydrophobic force is the energetically dominant force for containment, adhesion, etc., in all life processes..

So, what is responsible for the hydrophobic force? Some cleverly engineered set of mechanisms external to the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which make up the water molecule? Some “superfluous causes,” to cite Newton again? NO! This vital force arises spontaneously from the highly polar nature of water itself — caused, as mentioned above, by the very different attraction to electrons of the O and H atoms in the H₂O molecule. This results in the O atom being negatively and the H atom positively charged. As a consequence, polar non-hydrophobic molecules (including the vast majority of organic compounds) whose atoms are also charged are electrostatically attracted to the O and H atoms in water. They are consequently liked by water and readily enter solution. On the other hand, in hydrocarbon chains, which are non-polar because the electronegativity of their constituent C and H atoms are close, neither the C nor H atoms are charged. Consequently, the atoms in hydrocarbons are not electrostatically attracted to the O and H atoms in water. They are disliked by water and forced to clump together in insoluble water, excluding complexes in the lipid bilayer membranes and in the hydrophobic core of proteins. 

In short, both the hydrogen bond and water’s hydrophobic force, and in effect much of the higher architecture of the cell, arise again not from extraneous “superfluous,” complex artifices but from the intrinsic properties of the basic elements of life.

Ridding the Body of Carbon Dioxide and Heat

In the fine-tuning of matter for life, yet another example of stunning elegance and parsimony is the way carbon dioxide and heat — two of the waste products of oxidative metabolism — are excreted from the body. Again, one might have imagined that their removal would have necessitated several complex mechanisms or processes additional and external to the properties of matter. But NO! Again, their excretion arises spontaneously and effortlessly from the basic properties of carbon dioxide and water, without the need for any extraneous assistance from “superfluous causes.” 

Carbon Dioxide

As Henderson pointed out in his classic The Fitness of the Environment,¹³ were CO₂ not a soluble gas, which can escape readily into the air in the lungs, its excretion would prove to be the greatest of challenges. And of course, nature obliges as CO₂ is indeed a soluble gas which can be excreted via the same organ system — the lungs — through which that other vital gas, oxygen, enters the body.

And there is a very remarkable aspect to the story of CO₂ excretion. It is something that has amazed me for many years since I first became interested in the fitness of the properties of matter for life. Its carriage to the lungs is not only as a dissolved gas but mainly as the compound bicarbonate (HCO₃^–). Once again illustrating the elegant parsimony of nature’s design, this compound is formed spontaneously (and effortlessly) by a combination of CO₂and H₂O, generating carbonic acid (H₂CO₃) which spontaneously dissociates into bicarbonate (HCO₃^–) and hydrogen ions (H⁺). That is, CO₂ + H₂O = H₂CO₃ = HCO₃^– + H⁺.

And although it is hard to believe, carbonic acid and the bicarbonate base (its conjugate base) provide a buffer — the bicarbonate buffer — which has just the right characteristics for buffering the blood against changes in acidity in an air-breathing organism.¹⁴ Moreover, it is the only buffer available with the right characteristics for this role. In other words, the only available buffer for one of the most important physiological functions in the body is formed spontaneously almost like magic from the two products of oxidative metabolism. The elegance and simplicity of the solution is simply astounding. If this were not common knowledge, it would never be believed!!

Heat

Another waste product of oxidative metabolism is heat. While heat is useful in endothermic (warm blooded) organisms to maintain a constant body temperature, excess heat must be eliminated rapidly from the body¹⁵ or hyperthermia would cause death in a matter of hours. So how is heat eliminated and how does the body defend itself against increases in heat? 

It turns out that it is water, the matrix of life and the medium of the blood (and intriguingly another waste product of oxidative metabolism), which plays the critical role. Firstly, water has a far higher specific heat compared with most liquids.¹⁶ This provides the body’s first defense against any increase in temperature. Secondly, water has one of the highest rates of heat conduction of any familiar fluid.¹⁷ So any heat produced in the tissues is readily transferred to the blood in the capillaries. Once in the blood, the heat is carried by the circulation to the periphery where it exits the body via the skin by conduction and radiation. However, when environmental temperatures are above body temperature, then the only means of eliminating heat is by exploiting the latent heat of evaporation of water.¹⁸ This is the highest of any molecular fluid¹⁹ and has a powerful cooling effect on the body. 

So, water’s high specific heat, its high heat conductivity, and its high latent heat are critical in maintaining a constant body temperature and ridding the body of excess heat. And what substance is it that carries the heat to the periphery? The same substance that protects the body from overheating — water, which as the uniquely fit medium of the circulation carries the heat from the tissues to the periphery for excretion!

That the excretion of the waste products of oxidative metabolism (or respiration) in higher organisms should depend upon such a profoundly beautiful synergy and parsimony compels the inference to intelligent design. One might aptly paraphrase Hoyle:²⁰ “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with the laws of chemistry and biology and fine-tuned the properties of matter towards the specific end of excreting the products of oxidative metabolism.” 

Anyone not stunned by the astonishing way heat and carbon dioxide are excreted from the body, and the parsimonious way by which the bicarbonate buffer is generated from the two end products of respiration, has surely lost all sense of wonder!

Water’s Fitness for the Hydrological Cycle

Yet another case of stunning parsimony in the fine-tuning of matter for life is the ensemble of fitness manifest in the diverse properties of water which enable the hydrological cycle. This remarkable cycle delivers the necessary water, minerals, and water-retaining soils to the land, making terrestrial plant and animal life possible. (For a more detailed review of water’s fitness for the hydrological cycle see my monograph The Wonder of Water.²¹)

What is so extraordinary about the hydrological cycle is that it depends entirely on not one but several different properties of water, most of which are unique to the “wonder fluid”! There are firstly the various properties of water which enable its cycling from sea to land and back from the land to the sea. These include water’s unique capacity to exist in three material states in ambient conditions: as a vapor, a liquid, or a solid. The water which evaporates from the ocean falls back to earth as rain or snow. The rain then flows back in streams and rivers to the sea. The snow either melts and is carried in rivers to the sea or it forms glaciers which either flow slowly ultimately back to the ocean or melt, releasing water which again flows back in rivers to the ocean. Water, it should be noted, is the only substance on the surface of the Earth which exists in the three material states in ambient conditions.²²

Heaping wonder on wonder, the hydrological cycle is enabled by two other properties of water. Those are the low viscosity of liquid water which ensures that the water which falls as rain rapidly flows back to the sea, and the low viscosity of solid water or ice which is much lower than that of most crystalline solids.²³ The latter ensures that vast quantities of ice never build up at the poles or in mountainous regions. Instead, the frozen water slowly returns to the sea. 

So, the delivery of water to terrestrial ecosystems is enabled not by any extraneous complex delivery mechanisms. Rather, it arises spontaneously from several different properties of water itself. In effect, water delivers itself to the land by its own unique intrinsic properties. How elegant!

Delivering the Minerals

But water alone is not sufficient for terrestrial ecosystems. Living things need a suite of up to about twenty different atoms to maintain their biological functions and structures. These must also be made available and delivered to the land if terrestrial life is to thrive. 

Amazing as it might seem, it is water again that does the heavy lifting. As the rivers tumble over cataracts and down mountain slopes on the journey back to the sea, several additional properties of water work together to leach the life-giving minerals from the rocks and deliver them ultimately throughout the terrestrial biosphere. There is (1) water’s excellence as a solvent. There is (2) its high surface tension (the highest of any familiar substance except for mercury²⁴) which draws water into the crevices in the rocks and in the higher latitudes or altitudes where water periodically freezes. And there is (3) water’s expansion on freezing (a nearly unique property of water²⁵) which tends to break open the rocks, assisting in their erosion and exposing a greater surface area for the solvation powers of water to work its magic. So, the leaching of the vital minerals from the rocks is yet again almost entirely the work of the wonder fluid.

Water-Retaining Soils

But even these achievements are still insufficient to sustain complex land-based ecosystems. The growth of plants and trees, upon which all terrestrial life depends, necessitates water-retaining soils. That is, soils which contain a network of micropores in which the water can be retained. Again, water comes to the rescue. It is the very same tumbling waters flowing over the rocks which leach out their mineral content, and which also through their tireless erosional efforts break down the rocks into the sands and silts, which form the solid matrix of the soil. The latter provides the vital micropores which because of the high surface tension of water retain water for the benefit of plants and trees and ultimately for the animals that depend on the nutrients they manufacture. 

That the colonization of the land by plants and animals should depend on the conspiring together of such diverse and, in many cases, unique properties of one material substance is a solution of transcending parsimony: a miracle of the first order. (And water’s fitness for life extends far beyond the hydrological cycle, as described in The Wonder of Water.)

In the way water enables the hydrological cycle we have what is perhaps the most stunning example in all nature of elegant parsimony in the fine-tuning of the properties of matter for life. The only common-sense and rational inference is that the properties of water were intelligently fashioned not just for the end of life on Earth but for the very specific end of terrestrial life.

Reflections 

I have tried to highlight here the elegant parsimony in the fine-tuning of the properties of some of the key atoms and material substances of carbon-based life on Earth. My purpose has been to show that in the biochemical domain, nature is indeed, as Isaac Newton rightly claimed, “pleased with simplicity” and abhors “superfluous causes.” The four atoms have of course many additional elements of fitness for life on Earth, many of which are described in my monograph The Miracle of the Cell.  

For example, there is the unique fecundity of the carbon atom which enables the assembly of the vast unparalleled emporium of organic compounds. There is the reluctance of oxygen to react at ambient temperatures which prevents spontaneous combustion of organic material and catastrophic forest fires and enables air-breathing organisms to live with an atmosphere greatly enriched in oxygen. There is the high specific heat of nitrogen which acts as a fire retardant, depressing the rate of fire spread, rendering fire controllable, and further lessening the severity of forest fires.  

In this short essay, space does not permit description of the unique fitness of many other atoms in the periodic table for many highly specific biochemical functions. Those include the unique fitness of the transition metals for the reduction and activation of oxygen in the body, overcoming its reluctance to react (as mentioned above) and enabling the organism to utilize oxidation to empower metabolism. 

The information presented in this essay is on any reasonable judgment compelling evidence of intelligent design. And the beauty of the design is not just for the carbon-based cell but also for advanced terrestrial organisms like ourselves. This is manifest in the fine-tuning of water for the hydrological cycle and in the ensemble of fine-tuning involved in the excretion of CO₂ and heat from the human body. If “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” as Keats famously said,²⁶ then all debate is closed; ID requires no further defense. 

Moreover, as the properties of matter are part of the very fabric of the world, it follows that the intelligent designer could have been none other than the omnipotent being who fabricated the laws of nature and the properties of matter and ordered the cosmos into existence. Further, because the properties of matter have remained unchanged since the origin of the universe some 14 billion years ago, more than any other line of evidence the fine-tuning reveals that life on Earth is no contingent afterthought but was conceived in the mind of the Master Magician at the very moment of creation. As Freeman Dyson famously put it: “The universe must have known in some sense we were coming.”²⁷

Einstein asked, “[Could] God … have created the world differently?” On the evidence presented here, the answer at least for the biochemical domain would seem to be no. For how might water be delivered to the land other than through the elegant exploitation of its own unique properties? Again, is there any way by which the atoms of life could be distributed efficiently throughout the biosphere (or indeed any analogous set of atoms in some counterfactual biosphere) unless their distribution arose simply and spontaneously from intrinsic properties of the atoms themselves or from the intrinsic properties of simple molecular combinations of the same four key atoms? It is also hard to envisage how the roles of the hydrogen bond and the hydrophobic force in assembling the higher order of the cell could be achieved except by exploiting the properties of the basic atomic building blocks themselves. 

Simply put, life as it exists on Earth would seem to be possible only because of a stunningly elegant and parsimonious embedding of highly specific elements of fitness in the properties of matter. There is not the slightest evidence that things could be otherwise; that a multitude of cumbersome mechanisms extraneous to the atoms themselves — a vast, improbable, unwieldy inventory of Newton’s “superfluous causes” — could take their place.   

For chemical life remotely comparable with the familiar carbon-based life as it exists on Earth, it appears the properties of matter would have to be fine-tuned as elegantly and exactly as they are. God, it seems, when He wove the fabric of the world, had no other choice.

Notes

1. Newton I. 1687. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia Mathematica). New York: Citadel Press, 1964. 389.
2. Wald G. “The Origins of Life.” PNAS. 1964; 52(2): 595–610. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.52.2.595.
3. Told to Ernst Straus. As quoted in Gerald Holton, The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies (1978), xii; Einstein A. Calaprice A. The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013. 344. 
4. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/biological-nitrogen-fixation-23570419/ .
5. Pauling L. The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry. 3. ed. NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. Chapter 12.
6. Ibid., 449.
7. Watson JD. Molecular Biology of the Gene, 3rd ed. California: W. A. Benjamin, 1976. 90.
8. Ibid.
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon–fluorine_bond#; 
10. Ferenczy G. Kellermayer M. Contribution of Hydrophobic Interactions to Protein Mechanical Stability. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal. 2022; 20(4): 1946–56; Dyson HJ. Wright PE. Scheraga HA. The Role of Hydrophobic Interactions in Initiation and Propagation of Protein Folding. PNAS. 2006; 103(35): 13057–61; Pace C. Nick BA. Shirley, M M. Ketan G. Forces Contributing to the Conformational Stability of Proteins. The FASEB Journal. 1996; 10(1) : 75–83..
11. Feng B. Sosa RP. Mårtensson AKF. Jiang K. Tong A. Dorfman KD. Takahashi M. et al. Hydrophobic Catalysis and a Potential Biological Role of DNA Unstacking Induced by Environment Effects.” PNAS. 2019; 116(35): 17169–74. 
12. Tanford C. “How Protein Chemists Learned about the Hydrophobic Factor: Protein Chemists and the Hydrophobic Factor.” Protein Science 1997; 6 (6): 1358–66. 
13. Henderson (1913) op cit., 139-140. Henderson comments: “In the course of a day a man of average size produces, as a result of his active metabolism, nearly two pounds of carbon dioxide. All this must be rapidly removed from the body. It is difficult to imagine by what elaborate chemical and physical devices the body could rid itself of such enormous quantities of material were it not for the fact that in the lungs … [carbon dioxide] can escape into air which is charged with but little of the gas. Were carbon dioxide not gaseous, its excretion would be the greatest of physiological tasks; were it not freely soluble, a host of the most universal physiological processes would be impossible.” 
14. Rose BD. Clinical Physiology of Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders. NY: McGraw Hill, 1977. Rose comments on p 176: “Calculation shows that because of the ease with which the carbon dioxide (and with it in effect the hydrogen ions) can be breathed away the buffering capacity of the bicarbonate system is in effect increased by between 10 to 20 times (compared with an ordinary buffer) and is far more efficient than ‘an ordinary buffer’ working even at its pH optimum.” Edsall JT. Wyman J. Biophys Chem. Vol. 1. NY: Academic Press, 1958. They comment on p. 550 “The combination of the acidity and buffering power of H₂CO₃ with the volatility of CO₂ provides a mechanism of unrivalled efficiency for maintaining constancy of pH in systems which are constantly being supplied as living organisms are with acidic products of metabolism.” 
15. Henderson op cit., 102-3: He comments. “In an animal like man, whose metabolism is very intense, heat is a most prominent excretory product, which has constantly to be eliminated in great amounts, and to this end only three important means are available: conduction, radiation, and the evaporation of water. The relative usefulness of these three methods varies with the temperature of the environment. At a low temperature there is little evaporation of water, but at body temperature or above there can be no loss of heat at all by conduction and radiation, and the whole burden is therefore thrown upon evaporation.”
16. Henderson op cit., 81; https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-d_391.html
17. Henderson op cit., 106; https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-liquids-d_1260.html#google_vignette
18. Henderson op cit. 102-103.
19. Chaplin M. Explanation of the Thermodynamic Anomalies of Water (T1–T11). Water Structure and Science, October 14, 2016. http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/thermodynamic_anomalies.html#vap 
20. Hoyle F. The Universe Past and Present Reflections. Engineering and Science, 1981; 42(2): 8-12.
21. Denton MJ. The Wonder of Water: Water’s Profound Fitness for Life on Earth and Mankind. 1st ed. The Privileged Species Series. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2017. Chapter 1.
22. Ball P. H2O: A Biography of Water. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999. 26. 
23. The viscosity of ice is 10 orders of magnitude less than that of most crustal rocks. See Shi Y. Cao J. Lithosphere Effective Viscosity of Continental China. Earth Science Frontiers. 2008; 15(30): 82–95; Middleton GV. Wilcock PR. Mechanics in the Earth and Environmental Sciences. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 84. 
24. Henderson op cit., 126.
25. Greenwood NN. Earnshaw A. Chemistry of the Elements. 2nd ed. Jordan Hill: Elsevier Science, 2012. 223-224.The expansion of water on freezing is greater than that of any other substance. For the expansion on freezing of the five known substances which also expand on freeing see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium#https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony
26. Keats J. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” May 1819. Poetry Foundation. Posted at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
27. Dyson F. “Energy in the Universe,” Scientific American, 224(3): 50–59.