>I haven't been following this thread closely (too much to do), but this one
>caught my eye. We had this discussion about the "reductionistic fantasy
>about the role of DNA" about a year ago. Many more wholistic thinking
>biologists, which includes most developmental biologists and evolutionary
>biologists (and not genecists or biochemists), do not have this
>reductionistic fantasy about the role of DNA. The very people that David
>cited would be my list--the paper by Gilbert from Cell is a marvelous
>overview. Another pair of recent books is Goodwin's *How the Leopard
>Changed Its Spots* and Cohen and Stewart's *The Collapse of Chaos*. Jon
>Wells, who used to contribute to this group, has a nice article on this
>subject. I can't find the reference, perhaps Paul Nelson can list it for
>us.
Jon Wells, "The History and Limits of Genetic Engineering," _International
Journal on the Unity of the Sciences_ 5 (1992): 137-50.
>It should be stated that this in no way necessarily lends support to the ID
>agenda. A denial of reductionism does not imply supernatural intervention.
You're right, it doesn't. Kauffman and Goodwin haven't come knocking at
the ID door, not by a long shot. They're aren't even in the neighborhood.
On the other hand, consider the following:
Of all the problems with the hypothesis that life started as nude
replicating RNA molecules, the one I find most insurmountable is the
one most rarely talked about: all living things seem to have a
minimal complexity below which it is impossible to go. ... Why is
there this minimal complexity? Why can't a system simpler than
pleuromona [a bacterium] be alive?
[S. Kauffman, _At Home in the Universe_, 1995, p. 42]
This notion, and Behe's idea of irreducible complexity, are kissing cousins.
Brother and sister, even. The advantage Mike has, however, is we know about
top-down causation. We do it all the time. This post to the reflector for
instance was caused, top-down, by me, sitting at a computer in the Origins &
Design editorial office in Evanston, IL. (Stop by if you're in town.)
Self-organization, however...
Paul Nelson