Posted on 02/03/2006 10:23:55 PM PST by neverdem
For those who are studying aspects of the origin of life, the question no longer seems to be whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving non-biological components but, rather, what pathway might have been followed.
—National Academy of Sciences (1996)
It is 1828, a year that encompassed the death of Shaka, the Zulu king, the passage in the United States of the Tariff of Abominations, and the battle of Las Piedras in South America. It is, as well, the year in which the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler announced the synthesis of urea from cyanic acid and ammonia.
Discovered by H.M. Roulle in 1773, urea is the chief constituent of urine. Until 1828, chemists had assumed that urea could be produced only by a living organism. Wöhler provided the most convincing refutation imaginable of this thesis. His synthesis of urea was noteworthy, he observed with some understatement, because “it furnishes an example of the artificial production of an organic, indeed a so-called animal substance, from inorganic materials.”
Wöhler’s work initiated a revolution in chemistry; but it also initiated a revolution in thought. To the extent that living systems are chemical in their nature, it became possible to imagine that they might be chemical in their origin; and if chemical in their origin, then plainly physical in their nature, and hence a part of the universe that can be explained in terms of “the model for what science should be.”*
In a letter written to his friend, Sir Joseph Hooker, several decades after Wöhler’s announcement, Charles Darwin allowed himself to speculate. Invoking “a warm little pond” bubbling up in the dim inaccessible past, Darwin imagined that given “ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc. present,” the spontaneous generation of a “protein compound” might follow, with this compound...
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
Oh, there's no doubt about that. The sentences you highlighted are actually in CG's linked page and bvw omitted them (while copying several preceding paragraphs) then touted Popper's recanted claims. bvw is simply another creationist liar.
g_w:I generally don't attack creationists too much on these threads because I try to make allowances for their lack of scientific background.
g_w:But even for me, this statement is too much to let slide.
g_w:Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot?
gw:Cheers!
bvw: Are you attacking a creationist?
No, but as I said, I can't let that statement slide.
However such behaviour is so atypical of me on these threads that I thought it just as well to explain why I was deviating from normal practice.
If you have explicit quotes, either from his books or (previously) private correspondence, it would make you case a lot stronger.
If you are relying on "reading between the lines" of his work, there is such a thing as doing that, and it can be legitimate. But in general one should have fairly good reasons for justifying one's reading between the lines when a straightforward parsing of the text suggests something different. Private interpretations are the way to Marxist, gender feminist, and other goofball interpretations of things which ordinarily are thought to be beyond question, or mistake.
H'mm, that's funny, I just stepped in a possible land mine (with incoming fire from ALL sides) concerning biblical exegesis.
So, as Snagglepuss used to say, "EXIT!...Stage Right!"
Cheers!
Marketers, lawyers, heck, all kinds of people rely on similar word usage when trying to advocate a controversial or partisan point of view.
Granted, scientists are supposed to be above this. But given all of the brouhaha over faked results in embryonic stem cells, cardiology, global warming, even the work of Nobelists being questioned (remember the whistleblower over Dr. Baltimore's results 12-15 years ago), well, what's a little semantic parsing among friends mortal enemies TM BWU-HAHAHAHAHAH! ;-)
Full Disclosure: When I first read that phrase "nothing has suggested" I took it to mean either "nothing disposative" or "nothing which worries ME". As RWP pointed out, it doesn't look like he's kept that close to the cutting edge. It could have been ignorance or "ignorance on purpose" : but I'm not familiar enough with the guy to know.
Cheers!
Not necessarily true at first, bvw could have just landed on the earlier text and gotten such a woody that he didn't know Popper had any subsequent writings on the subject.
However, given the subsequent postings to him in this thread, that would no longer be an acceptable excuse.
Cheers!
"Asimov (one of my heroes, and the man who taught me to love science and learning) was also a biochemist by training, but hated doing research. Harold Urey was one of his teachers."
A hero of mine as well. If I recall, Urey also taught Sagan. How would you like to have taken an undergraduate chemistry course with Asimov and Sagan as classmates and Urey as the professor? Wow.
Perhaps; I'll freely admit I don't keep up with this as much as many others here apparently do.
On the other hand, when I read over, for example, the description of Fegley's research on this particular topic, it seems to be based more on a fair number of historical assumptions run through a mathematical blender, and less on physical, measureable data. So, as Joe Layman lurking at these threads on a topic which has a strong philosophical component for both parties, it's awfully difficult to discern just how significant is that weight pushing pendulum around....
Popper's is very specific about what exactly he means when he says he changed his mind, and what he is recanting. He adds only this: "How the theory of natural selection could be untestable and yet of great scientific interest ... My solution was that the doctrine [note that word well!] of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme."
That is ... he is pulling the wool over your eyes, you confounded, self-made idiots, deluded by Darwinsism.
Just like Galileo under his breath ...
And to you as well is my last.
For another analogy, the saying "scripture interprets scripture" might be applicable here: wouldn't one want to look at the totality of an author for illumination of a controversial passage? (Some Roman Catholics might not agree with that principle, so your mileage may vary...)
The air of concentrated smugness in that room must have rivalled NPR...
Cheers!
That's why I mentioned the other links on the thread. Can you only keep one thing in your head at the time?
The geochemical results, together with sedimentological data, strongly support: (1) deposition of Dresser Formation and Strelley Pool Chert carbonates from Archaean seawater, in part as particulate carbonate sediment; (2) biogenicity of the stromatolitic carbonates; (3) a reducing Archaean atmosphere; (4) ongoing extensive terrestrial erosion prior to 3.45 Ga.Here's a site which gives a Mickey-Mouse, For Dummies, overall summary of the Archaean.
The atmosphere was very different from what we breathe today; at that time, it was likely a reducing atmosphere of methane, ammonia, and other gases which would be toxic to most life on our planet today.What I'm saying is that, to further his agenda, Berlinksi misrepresents or cultivates a studied ignorance of precisely what he purports to describe. Of course, he probably gets more of his material from the infamous YEC "geologist" John Woodmorappe (not even his real name). Berlinski and Philip Johnson have cited him frequently and he's bogus as a three dollar bill.
Asimov and Sagan were about a decade apart, but that would still be cool. Even cooler would have been serving on the same Naval Station with Asimov, Heinlein, AND L.Sprague DeCamp!
My point. Berlinski is not doing what her purports to do, writing a "where things are in abiogenesis summary." It is irrelevant that ad agencies also do this, except to note that the Discovery Institute is far more of an ad agency than a "think tank" and Berlinski is a huckster for ID, not a commentator in science history.
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