b_sharp seemed to find it on his own. Perhaps you can too. It's not my responsibility to read stuff for you, read it to you, or bring you milk and cookies.
Evolution, by the way, does not deal with the origin of life.
Ah, one of my favourite evo red herrings, but in the name of changing the topic, let's go at this one.
First, Sewell's critique does not deal only with the origin of life. That said...
Of course in the narrowest sense ToE, by virtue of the mechanism of natural selection, presupposes life, and only operates on life, but evolution in the more generally accepted, though arguably more slack, understanding of the term, certainly assumes a gradualist and Naturalist theory of abiogenesis.
So it's not clear to me what you think this point gains you. Are you really going to be happy with a ToE which presumes a divinely created original life form to get things started?
Also, tell me exactly what is the most primitive form of life necessary for ToE to operate? Are we talking protein? amino acids? Nucleotide? Enzyme? RNA? DNA? Complete unicellular organism? At what point do we hand things off to Darwin?
Did you find a peer reviewed article or textbook that concludes thermodynamics is troublesome for evolution?
First, Sewell's critique does not deal only with the origin of life. That said...
Of course in the narrowest sense ToE, by virtue of the mechanism of natural selection, presupposes life, and only operates on life, but evolution in the more generally accepted, though arguably more slack, understanding of the term, certainly assumes a gradualist and Naturalist theory of abiogenesis.
Abiogenesis is origin of life. Just because some asshole says a slack understanding of the term evolution assumes naturalistic abiogenesis does not mean that thermodynamics is troublesome for evolution once life exists.
No one claims to know how life started. There is speculation and there is research, but no detailed hypothesis.
We know that evolution operates on single celled organisms, and we know it operates on viruses. But at seast 6/7ths of the history of life is unavailable for examination.
ToE is independent of the origin of life. As long as there is inheritable variation, mutation, and differential survival, there will be evolution. How could there not be?
"b_sharp seemed to find it on his own. Perhaps you can too. It's not my responsibility to read stuff for you, read it to you, or bring you milk and cookies. "
What I found was Sewell's book. I do not believe it is a text book, at least I hope not, the appendix the article this thread is based on is so full of errors and misses so much relevant information as to be useless even as a casual read.
"Of course in the narrowest sense ToE, by virtue of the mechanism of natural selection, presupposes life, and only operates on life, but evolution in the more generally accepted, though arguably more slack, understanding of the term, certainly assumes a gradualist and Naturalist theory of abiogenesis"
Sewell's article is supposed to be a science based piece, what is he doing using common definitions unless he needs the room to set up strawmen? The reason we can't argue abiogenesis within evolution is because it may or may not use the same mechanisms as evolution. If it turns out that life results from evolutionary mechanisms acting on pre-life then we can include it in the debate. We haven't reached that point yet.
"Also, tell me exactly what is the most primitive form of life necessary for ToE to operate? Are we talking protein? amino acids? Nucleotide? Enzyme? RNA? DNA? Complete unicellular organism? At what point do we hand things off to Darwin?
We don't know yet. Bacteria certainly. Virii almost positively. Prions, I'm unsure. Nanobes, that is not known.