[danwee]

What always surprised me is not DNA, but how other non-living things can exist at all without DNA. It makes sense to me that I have green eyes since that's what my DNA says... but where is defined that a rock has a particular color or weight or texture?

Whenever I think of how planets move around a star, I always think "Ok. So, I imagine that at some point the universe should know the distance between planet X and star Y, and also, probably, maybe, it should know their masses... but that data is nowhere defined (that we know). So, is the data computed 'on the fly' every $minimal-unit-of-time?). Perhaps the universe doesn't need to know distances nor masses, though.

[sohex]

I think you might be trying to form a model based on false premises here. The universe doesn't know anything. Or to put it another way, the universe doesn't know anything because it is everything. You seem to be assuming a sort of director and actor based model wherein the universe (the director) needs to be telling the planets and stars (the actors) what to do, but that's not the case. The planets and stars interact with each other via the various forces that they're subject to and their state may or may not change as a result.

I guess, to generalize, my point is that things are as they are as a consequence of the physics that they're subject to. A rock has its particular color, weight, and texture due to its elemental composition. A molecule doesn't need to know what it is in order to reflect or absorb certain wavelengths of light, that's what naturally occurs when those wavelengths interact with particles that have a certain composition and state. There's no conscious direction happening at any point, nor is there any data being computed.

The universe is essentially a medium that exists with certain properties and everything in it is stuff that also exists with certain properties. We call the manner in which these properties interact physics. So in summation I'd say that there are intrinsic properties and emergent phenomena based on those properties, that's where a rock gets its color, weight, and texture.