I made a big mistake the other day at work. I checked the reflector
archives. I saw Eddie Olmstead's mistaken post which should have gone to the
ASA. Then I saw that Brian replied to the Eddie post. Well, I couldn't
resist this, like an addict can't resist narcotics.
The Defence
Brian Harper wrote:
>>Thus, the probability of interest is that of forming the shortest
sequence that performs the desired function.
Now, after all this, let me say again that I agree with Glenn in
spirit on this business. The reason I get worked up over this is
that I don't want to see abiogenesis research return to the dark
ages of chance. My personal feeling is that self-organization
combined with deep sea hydrothermal vents will be the key to
unlocking the secrets of the origin of life, if indeed this mystery
has a solution accessible to science. I would like to see more
work in this area. One of the keys to this is spreading the news
that the soup is dead :-).
Actually, I suppose that I should have just skipped all the
above and used the words of Leo Buss to answer Glenn:
"Because there's no primordial soup; we all know that, right?"<<
I want to make clear that I was NOT, repeat NOT talking about the "primordial
soup". In fact the article I cited in my original post to ASA was Eklund,
Szostak and Bartel, "Structurally Complex and Highly Active RNA Ligases
Derived from Random RNA sequences." Science v 269, July 21, 1995, p 364-370
This article is applicable to the RNA world not to the primordial soup.
The mathematics I presented here is applicable to proteins, DNA and to the
RNA world. Any map of functionality over sequence space is going to have the
properties I used in my discussion. Brian,I don't know why you think the
math I presented is not applicable to the RNA world. RNA is a polymer, has
various lengths of sequences which perform a given function and have a
multiple sequence =>function map.
Now, you say you do not want to go back to the dark days of chance. You use
chance in a very funny way. Self-organizational systems are operated by
stochastic means e.g. Sierpinski's Gasket and I believe evolution. A
mutation is effected by chance. Then the brutal requirement that the system
be functional is applied and only certain directions in sequence space are
allowed. Similarly, in the sequence space of the DNA of living systems, only
certain pathways are allowable due to the brutal requirement that the system
live. Thus in my view, God was the one who designed the pathways in the
sequence space. Like a rat in a maze, living systems can only travel the
sequence-space paths which God designed into the fabric of the universe.
Thus while chance drives the mutation, design drives the direction allowed by
living systems.
I would also apply this to the RNA world at the very beginning.
A CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Note that I am moving off of AOL. My new address is grmorton@gnn.com AOL
will not allow me to post more than a page or so to Talk.Origins. So I had
to find a new provider. Since I have a lot of friends [O.K. only one or two
:-) ] on the reflector, I thought this would be the best way to let you all
know about my change of address. Last night I posted a synopsis of my views
on Talk. Origins so I probably will have my hands full there and will not be
able to reply to what I am sure will be a great and thoughtful reply by
Brian.
glenn
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Of course the opinnions are mine. I wrote them didn't I?
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