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 ...
Crick would later observe that “an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”
http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/crick.html--Narrator: Perhaps more than anything else Dr. Francis Crick was, and continues to be, a creative thinker and adept communicator of ideas. In his book, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, Crick propounds the theory of directed panspermia that he and colleague Leslie Orgel developed to explain the origin of life on earth. This notion that life on earth was seeded by microorganisms from a higher civilization and sent through space on unmanned rockets remains outside the mainstream of science; however, the mental exercises that Crick entertains both for and against his theory are stimulating and informative.
I thought the writing was quite good, actually. I can't judge the technical content, but I thought he was okay in describing the historical developments. When he got to the present, I gather from a few comments that he's missing a lot, and I could determine for myself that he is stupefied by "the odds" against solving the "mysteries" that remain to be worked out.
As I understand it, it is the amino acids which are chiral.
The molecules themselves are randomly oriented.... no difference in destruction of either D, or L will be notable.
As to this point, it seems to me that, if it were a correct argument, then a handed molecule in solution would have no effect on the polarization of transmitted light (because the orientations wrt the light would be random). But this article specifically mentions the effect of solutions of chiral molecules on light polarization so I think your argument is wrong.
Off the cuff I can think of two ways it may be wrong. First, the orientations might not be random (e.g. a magnetic field migh align them). Second, you have considered the bond as if it were isolated but it is part of a larger quantum system and it is that structure that affects the interaction of the bond with light. For example, consider a helical structure and suppose that the interaction is significant only when the structure is aligned in the propagation direction of the light. Even if you rotate (not reflect) the helix 180 so that it's facing "the other way," it will look the same to the light and so have the same rather than an opposite effect on the light.
It's not bad writing, but he seems deliberately to adopt a frenchified style, which I find irritating. It's as if he wants to remind us that he lives in Paris and can speak French.
Needless to say, if he weren't a creationist, he'd be pilloried for this. :-)
He's definitely missed a lot of the most recent interesting developments in abiogenesis.
;^)
"Well, I've finished reading it. As you say, it's good on the history. But when he runs out of present-day discoveries, the author gets lost in the all-too-common fog of incredulousness that any further progress can ever be made. He has hit a wall, so he readily accepts that the wall may be permanent barrier, beyond which lies the eternal unknown. Still, it's a good article. Very well written."
This is noteworthy: PatrickHenry concedes that an article written by someone from the Discovery Institute is "very well written." So maybe they aren't all just a bunch of yahoos after all, eh.
When you say, "He has hit a wall," I think you are missing the point. It is science itself, not just Berlinski, that has "hit a wall" in trying to understand the origin of life by purely naturalistic mechanisms. You suggest that this "wall" may someday be overcome. Perhaps it will, but it hasn't been overcome yet. Not even close.
What you are saying boils down to a hope or a belief that science may someday be able to explain the origin of life without recourse to intelligent design. Hope and faith are fine, but please do not confuse them with science!
I am always puzzled by evolutionists who have rock-solid confidence in purely naturalistic evolution, yet who simply shove the origin-of-life problem under the carpet by claiming its not part of evolution. Yes, technically it is separate from evolution, but it *precedes* evolution both chronologically and logically. Evolution depends on it! Why should we believe that evolution required no intelligent design if the first cell that started the ball rolling cannot also be explained by purely naturalistic mechanisms? That sure seems like an arbitrary distinction to me.
Well, does Berlinski surf Free Republic for the crevo threads?
Full Disclosure: I thought I read within the last couple of days that Race Bannon had met Berlinski. Maybe if he knew Berlinski well enough, Race could send him to the link ...?
Cheers!
Egad! Crick's comments were 50 years ago - meaningless to a Creationist, but critical in Science, especially molecular biology.
Re: Your post 50...
I'll bet it felt great to get that off your chest ! :-)
Thanks for a concise intro, it's already bookmarked.
Cheers!
D and L (or S and R) have nothing to do with the rotation of polarized light (+ or -), they are simply based on standardized structures. Many biomolecules are D, even though amino acids are all L in proteins (D amino acids do occur in bacterial cell walls). L-glucose is still sweet, but not as digestible as its D-isomer is.
Could make a very long list of this kind of stuff.
He writes about abiogenesis issues but doesn't read about them? I'm a frustrated SF writer. Why do I know what Berlinski doesn't?
I'll tell you. What I know is inconvenient to his thesis. A thread or two back, I noticed Meyer, another DI Fellow, citing that Antony Flew had been moved by ID arguments to reject atheism for Deism. Thing is, Meyer had forgotten to mention that Flew, while still a Deist, had since announced that he is no longer impressed with ID and biological complexity arguments. (He still likes the anthropic principle stuff, however.)
Selective citation is a very creationist behavior. Real scholarship standards do not permit it. However, Berlinski goes beyond selective citation. He actively denies that there has been any shift in the evidence away from what he wants to say. There has.
The spell checker performed a 'random mutation' on what I had typed in. Darwin would be proud of it.
Wrong. Water is the chief constituent of urine. Duh!
Give him a F because he should have used the word solute instead of constituent.
"The bases are nitrogenous because their chemical activity is determined by the electrons of the nitrogen atom, and they are bases because they are one of two great chemical clans—the other being the acids, with which they combine to form salts."
This is chemical nonsense. They are nitrogenous because they contain nitrogen; it has nothing to do with 'chemical activity'.
Not according to the Lewis Theory of Acids and Bases. Do you have any links for the rest of your assertions?
The 5% number was given in a Popular Science article on mining Helium 3 on the moon. It comes from gravity well considerations + cross sectional areas : the moon is 1/80th the gravity well that earth is but has a 3000 mile diameter vs earth's 8000 mile diameter; it just works out that way in the cosmic shooting gallery : 5% give or take of incoming meteoric mass hits the moon and 95% hits the earth. In fact, the newest major lunar crater-impact was actually seen by an monk in medieval times and recorded in the log of the monastery. Carl Sagan found that one. Because the captured large body(luna=moon)was at its approx 5 to 6 deg inclination to the solar ecliptic(it's now 5.9 deg), it tore up and down through the terran RING SYSTEM at 23.5 deg to the solar ecliptic, rapidly destroying it(bull in a china shop)in a 1000 years or less. That ring system was approx equal to the lunar Remnant Core mass(7 x 10^22Kg)and was composed of zillions of hydrate rich clathrates(sponge-like gravel of stuck together dust grains). The RC gains SAM(Spin Angular Momentum)from the ring system and moves outward, the ring system moves inward, plowing through the outer gas tendrils of terra's massive atmosphere(100-120 atm masses of today)as zillions of meteorites falling, falling, falling toward the surface below. The equatorial swath band looks like endless saharan sand dunes on a venusian volcanic surface, 20 to 50 km deep; earth's future continents and oceans have arrived, 4.4 billion years ago. Now Gen 2:6 takes over. High above the same ring planetisimals impact the lunar surface but are FRIED. The RC is still HOT, HOT, HOT as it has just gotten ripped in half by the inside-the-Roche-Lobe-capture event(lava covered). Thus, because of its light gravity, the volatiles(hydrates)are boiled away into the solar wind(your steam analogy)but the refractory isotopes are IDENTICAL to terran refractory isotopes in %ages. This is EXACTLY the Apollo sample results. As to luna not having an iron core, it began as mar's junior twin(3.3 g/cc vs mars' 3.95 g/cc is but a 15% difference). From the TEDF theory of solar system formation, that fits perfectly. Some violent event separated mars and luna soon after system formation at approx 4.55B, giving luna up to 150 million years to be an earth orbit crosser. Thus, the mars sized body doesn't directly impact the earth to slow down and the splash debris goes into orbit, no, it "hits" the Roche Lobe, is torn into long tail and fat head(it was rapidly spinning prograde)and the 2 halves go their separate ways : long tail at high exit velocity like SL9 and RC-head into CAPTURED orbit(F=GM1M2/d^2 where M2 now has less mass, and greater cg to cg distance = further rightward deflection, from Kepler's 2nd Law, = highly elliptical orbit instead of an escape parabolic orbit). Drop a spinning, highly viscous oil droplet into the eddy around the bath tub drain, for a blink you'll see what luna looked like inside the Roche Lobe. But of course you'll never convince religious converts like radio astronomer, I-S is a RELIGION with him/them, they must SCREAM this I-S nonsense to the world as REVEALED TRUTH. Poor souls, they are the Lestrade-character in the story, I'm the Sherlock Holmes-detective....
All any non bond breaking frequency can do is alter a vibration, or rotational state, if absorbed. They can't explode a molecule. I mentioned randomly oriented for the purpose of the bond breaking frequencies, which act on single bonds.
Sherlock Holmes knew how to make paragraphs.
Any molecule that has these assignmnets rotates a polarized beam, because of the asymmetry at the chiral carbon. The interaction is not an absoption, it's a dielectric effect. The 20 std amino acids are all L. Of those, 19 are levorotary(l). I think arginine is (r).
What is the distinction, in techinal terms? Inquiring minds want to know.
"Except that evolution does not depend on any particular process for the origin of life. That is why we consider the question of the origin of life to be irrelevant to the theory of evolution. It does not matter how the first life forms came to exist, evolution would occur just the same regardless."
What I meant is that evolution depends on the first living cell in the sense that it starts from there. If the first living cell never appeared, no evolution could occur either.
But in a deeper sense, the naturalistic premise of evolution obviously depends on how the first living cell came to be. If that first cell cannot be explained by purely naturalistic mechanisms (i.e., with no "intelligent design"), then why should science be premised on that assumption for the evolution of life *after* that point? If ID cannot be explained away *before* that point in time, then why should it be prohibited *after* that point?
What I find intersting is the similarity between early evolution theory and today's version. Early evolutionists believed in "spontaneous generation" of living cells. Being clueless about the astounding complexity of living cells, they believed that living cells simply arise all over the place at random. They were finally proven wrong by "creationists" such as Pasteur. But now the hard-core naturalists (e.g., Dawkins) essentially still cling to a modern version of spontaneous generation. By reducing it to a single cell at a single point in time, they essentially shield their theory from any sort of test. How can anyone prove that such an event never happened?
What was that about a scientific theory needing to be "falsifiable"?
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