I accidentally pinged him. I didn’t take his screenname off one of my computers. Not to worry, the problem is solved now. What did you think of the article? Fascinating stuff!!!
The article seems to be a technical restatement of the big question, chicken or egg first. That's not disparagement, it's a simple question that goes to the heart of the argument. Information doesn't float free like fog in the air, it is expressed in the a physical reality, the organism, in whole or in part.
But it takes information for the organism to exist.
Chicken or egg first.
I think this catches the flavor of the article:
“Living organisms have two main components: (a) enzyme mediated
biochemistry and (b) information-based regulatory
processes. Which came first? De Duve favours an ‘enzymes
first’ model because the information-based systems are so
optimal and specialized that he believes some process of
selection was needed to separate out the spectacularly clean
(100% purity) components from the ‘dirty gemisch’ (impure
mixture) of the environment.
However, physicist Hubert Yockey has studied information
in biology for 50 years and persuasively argues that because life has no reverse code for transferring information from proteins to RNA or DNA then it is impossible for life to have arisen in
a ‘proteins first’ scenario.
The information must have come first. The simplest code would have been a binary (two-letter)alphabet but all life works upon a more complex four-letter alphabet, so Yockey concludes that the question of origin is undecidable.4
This is not a necessary conclusion however, and appears to be no more than a ruse to avoid the uncomfortable conclusion that life may have been intelligently designed.”
And it is apparent that the question of life having been created cannot be avoided by saying, ‘We just don't talk about that’.
So in my wordy way, I'm saying I enjoyed reading it. I'll have to go over it again soon.