All over the internet and in public forums hither and yon, the battle rages between Biological Evolution and the Intelligent Design Movement. When the evidence is descriptive, the format of the debate reminds one of a courtroom. But when the subject turns to mathematics, the format of the debate narrows to such issues as "irreducible complexity."
I aver that it doesn't matter who wins this particular contest. Even if the "movement" were crushed tomorrow, the mathematicians and physicists are already in the fields of molecular biology and evolutionary biology. And there are far too many Platonists (weak and strong, naturalized and not) to sustain any "just so" stories.
Alamo-Girl: What a glorious essay. It took me three hours to read it. And every single paragraph paid dividends.
Need some more time to think it through; but for openers, I thought the following was laugh-out-loud hilarious:
"The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") consists of $1.35 Million (USD) paid directly to the winner(s). The Prize will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. To win, the explanation must be consistent with empirical biochemical and thermodynamic concepts as further delineated herein, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s).
Bet you anything, the prize committee will be sitting on that cash 'til Kingdom come, given those criteria! (Which are so descriptive of the profound epistemological and institutional problems that science needs to confront these days; or so it seems to me.)
Some readers have complained that mathematicians and physicists shouldn't go dabbling around in biology, 'til they actually get an education in biology first.
Hmmmmmmm.... There's another way to look at the problem:
The eye has 130 sites. That means there are 20 to the power of 130 possible combinations of amino acids along those 130 sites. Somehow nature has selected the same combination of amino acids for all visual systems in all animals. That fidelity could not have happened by chance. It must have been pre-rpogrammed in lower forms of life. But those lower forms of life, once-celled, did not have eyes. [emphasis added]
If Schroeder isn't speaking of "biology" here, then whut the hail is his topic???
I am simply fascinated, A-G, with the problem that Pattee raises. Thank you so much for reprising Wolfram for me, with one of the most startling observations of his text. And Schroeder -- his insights are liberating.... IMO.
I would point out that a 20^130 possible combinations does NOT imply a probability of 1:(20^130) of a particular conformation actually occuring -- apples and oranges. This is a very common and slippery fallacy. Some conformations have astronomically smaller probabilities than this, and some have astronomically greater probabilities than this. This is a glaringly obvious flaw to anyone with a background in organic chemistry. The phase spaces are highly biased and irregular, making assessments of probability by a simple combinatorial analysis grossly inaccurate. Heck, if this wasn't the case it would make computational chemistry a LOT easier and simpler than it actually is.
Lots of people cling to this argument, but it is a strawman. The size of the combinatorial space is not the same as the probability of any particular piece of that combinatorial space occurring. Flawed premise, flawed conclusion. For a simple analogy, think of a loaded dice. Just because it has 6 sides does not mean that the probability of any given side coming up is 1:6 if the dice is loaded. The distribution function matters. A lot.
I treasure all your posts and am quite anxious to absorb your musings when you are ready to share them!
Also, I agree that the prize is a hoot and a very difficult challenge. It’s existence also makes the state-of-the-art clear, at least to me.
Indeed, Schroeder is speaking of biology in the same sense that Pattee, Wolfram, Yockey and Rocha are speaking of it. They are looking at the subject through the eyes of mathematics, information theory and physics – and all three are applicable across virtually all science disciplines.
The Pattee document at the link is loaded with good information, but I obviously couldn't excerpt everything I liked (LOL!)
tortoise answers this very nicely in #148.
Extant phenomena in biology arrived there via extremely biased pathways and with the help of many external variables. Biologists don't suggest that Cytochrome c, to use Yockey's example, arose by chance one fine day from simple molecules in a soup.
Some readers have complained that mathematicians and physicists shouldn't go dabbling around in biology, 'til they actually get an education in biology first.
The wonderful thing about FR is that armchair philosophers vicariously become physicists, mathematicians, and biologists, even without an education.