On Fri, 19 Nov 1999 07:54:33 +0000, Gary Collins wrote:
[...]
GC>"The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origins of Language.
>
>John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary. Oxford University Press, New
>York,1999 ($25).
>
>"Maynard Smith and Szathmary are intrigued by the complexity of
>organisms. "The more we know about them-their biochemistry, their
>anatomy, their behaviour-the more astonishing are the detailed
>adaptations that we discover. How could all this complexity have
>arisen?" Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection cannot alone
>account for it; that theory predicts only that organisms will get better
>at surviving and reproducing in their current environment, not that they
>will become more complex....
[...]
GC>Darwin's theory...cannot alone account for it: hmm, this is in stark
>contrast to the views of Dawkins, Dennett and others of a similar ilk -
>and also possibly to many of not such a similar ilk!...
Thanks to Gary for this. I plan to order the book.
But actually it is not "in stark contrast to the views of Dawkins...and
others of a similar ilk" that "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection
annot alone account for" the origin of life.
For starters, Maynard Smith is "of a similar ilk". He is one of the world's
leading Neo-Darwinists and Dawkins is one of his disciples.
But also, Dawkins himself admits in the fine print that Darwinism cannot
explain the origin of life:
"Cumulative selection is the key to all our modern explanations of life....
Cumulative selection is the key but it had to get started, and we cannot
escape the need to postulate a single-step chance event in the origin of
cumulative selection itself...So, cumulative selection can manufacture
complexity while single-step selection cannot. But cumulative selection
cannot work unless there is some minimal machinery of replication and
replicator power, and the only machinery of replication that we know
seems too complicated to have come into existence by means of anything
less than many generations of cumulative selection! Some people see this as
a fundamental flaw in the whole theory of the blind watchmaker. They see
it as the ultimate proof that there must originally have been a designer, not
a blind watchmaker but a far-sighted supernatural watchmaker." (Dawkins
R., "The Blind Watchmaker", [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint,
pp139-141)
And Dawkins is right that a "far-sighted supernatural watchmaker" can
explain the origin of life (plus a whole lot more!).
Steve
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"From the standpoint of population genetics, positive Darwinian selection
represents a process whereby advantageous mutants spread through the
species. Considering their great importance in evolution, it is perhaps
surprising that well-established cases are so scarce; for example, industrial
melanisms in moths and increases of DDT resistance in insects are
constantly being cited. On the other hand, examples showing that negative
selection is at work to eliminate variants produced by mutation abound."
(Kimura M., "Population Genetics and Molecular Evolution," The Johns
Hopkins Medical Journal, Vol. 138, No. 6, June 1976, p260)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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