[dirtymac]

Please keep in mind that this whole monkeys typing Shakespeare was used as an example to justify evolution. Lightening striking a tide pool (hot dilute chemicals) you would eventually get life started. Then entered the monkeys with typewriters. So if you could get Shakespeare you can get life started.

my memory fades with time but if you took the number of DNA strands and the number of DNA combination the number of also quite large.

I believe we have disproved the monkeys with typewriters as an impossibility. And like the random lightening strikes is also an impossibility.

[GJones2]

>> “Please keep in mind that this whole monkeys typing Shakespeare was used as an example to justify evolution....I believe we have disproved the monkeys with typewriters as an impossibility. <<

Random typing by monkeys doesn’t take into account evolutionary selection on the basis of fitness for survival, though — natural selection. The monkeys wouldn’t be starting from scratch each time one started to type. Something more comparable would be a million monkeys typing, then as soon as they produce the first word of the play, they’d continue typing at random until the next word is produced, and so on.

(The analogy still doesn’t hold, though, because natural selection doesn’t have a goal such as producing a particular play.)

[GJones2]

When I mentioned Borges above, I didn't realize he had a connection to the monkeys analogy itself. I merely recalled something related in his story about the admirer of Cervantes trying to write Don Quixote. I see from the Wikipedia article "Infinite monkey theorem", though, that the "Library of Babel" story that others have mentioned in this thread is related in the sense that it contains all the random combinations. I didn't wade through the whole article because I don't think the analogy with evolution holds.