> In a recent post I mentioned a book by Harold Morowitz:
>
> _Cosmic Joy & Local Pain_, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987.
>
> It turns out that Morowitz has been involved with applications of
> self-organization in biology for a long time. I'm not familiar
> enough with the history of this subject to say for sure, but I
> suspect that he is one of the pioneers of the field.
>
There's an interesting citation of Morowitz' work in Robert Shapiro's
_Origins_ book. (That's the biochemist Shapiro - not the has-been
O.J. defense lawyer :-) )
Shapiro first cites the results of Fred Hoyle and N.C. Wickramsinghe,
who estimated the odds of spontaneous generation of a living bacterium
at 10^40,000 to 1 and that was after VERY generous allowances were made
(like assuming that the primordial soup consisted of homochiralic amino
acids, etc.) Shapiro then cites Morowitz who made estimates based on
more realistic conditions (as if 1 in 10^40,000 wasn't bad enough):
"A more realistic estimate has been made by Harold Morowitz, a Yale
University physicist. He has calculated the odds for the following case:
<Next paragraph outline assumptions in his estimation.>
The answer computed by Morowitz reduces the odds of Hoyle to utter
insignificance: 1 chance in 10^100,000,000,000....This number is so
large that to write it in conventional form we would require several
hundred thousand blank books. We would enter a '1' on the first page
of the first book, and then fill it, and the remainder of the books, with
zeros....
Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to
the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to
wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle.
One escape hatch yet exists for spontaneous generation. Why need the event
have been probable? We can just stare at the odds, shrug, and note with thanks
how lucky we were." (pp 128-129)
BH>
> Here are a few quotes from his [Morowitz'] book which will likely make
> hard-core naturalists shudder ;-).
>
> The question is whether life with all its subtleties is
> some accidental property called into existence by events
> of blind chance or whether it is a more fundamental property
> of the world of nature. As we study the complex and interrelated
> aspects of planetary life, are we simply to attribute it all to
> random events, or are we to seek deep meanings about ourselves
> and the cosmos? Looking at the evidence, Henderson opted for the
> latter approach. So do I, but that commitment to meaning only
> becomes apparent after one spends some considerable effort looking
> into our understanding of the physics and chemistry of life and
> the biological applications.
> [p. 104]
>
Curious. After looking into the physics and chemistry of life, he
concludes with a commitment to meaning. But which one....
-jpt
--John P. Turnbull (jpt@ccfadm.eeg.ccf.org)Cleveland Clinic FoundationDept. of Neurology, Section of Neurological ComputingM52-119500 Euclid Ave.Cleveland Ohio 44195Telephone (216) 444-8041; FAX (216) 444-9401