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Now Hubert Yockey we must take seriously as a mathematician, because he is a genuine expert on information theory.

No disrespect, but what has Yockey contributed to the field? I have copies of essentially every important and vaguely interesting bit of theoretical work in the field and he is cited nowhere. And when I do a search on citations, all the papers I can find with his name on them appear to be theoretically quite shallow and arguably of dubious fitness. Yockey may be genuine in an academic sense, but his work is in the shallow end of the pool as far as I can tell on the mathematics side of things, and certainly with regard to information theory.

From my vantage point, Yockey looks more like a dabbler in information theory than a genuine expert. There are not that many "genuine experts" in the field, and I am acquainted with most of them -- he is not one of their peers.

tortoise, thank you for your post. I'm going to respond to you before I reply to Doctor Stochastic's discussion of randomness above, which I want to chew on a bit. And I see no implied disrespect in your taking issue with my portrayal of Yockey as "a genuine expert on information theory" because I am beginning to question the very notion myself. In fact, I may have been dead wrong on that one, though I am trying to get some more information to make up my mind. But I do want to explain what prompted me to write that assessment.

I posted that appraisal of Yockey after learning that he has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Cal-Berkeley and that he worked on the Manhattan Project, which I regard as pretty good credentials right off the bat. But I also noticed on a web page I visited on a Christian discussion site that he stated his belief that we may be surprised to find out "how many scientists are really talking religion and how many theologians are talking science" when speaking of a need to bridge the gap, which I took to be a decidedly "unscientific" statement, which is why I also posted my qualifying comment "I recognize Yockey as a legitimate scholar -- I did not say 'scientist' . . ." in my post #281. I also noticed somewhere else, and I can't seem to find this reference right away, that he was asked to explain why he quoted the Bible in his book Information Theory and Molecular Biology, which got me to wondering as to whether he had an agenda, a doubt that has since been enhanced by my reading of his appraisal of those arguing for abiogenesis as "Dialectical Materialists," i.e. "Marxists," which frankly leaves me dumbfounded. And I believe I took that Christian discussion site's page at its word when I posted my comment that he was an "expert on information theory." Finally; I'll add in two more quick points. One of the web sites that does a lot of work debunking "creationist myths" posted something to the effect that Yockey's work, though flawed in their opinion, had to be taken seriously and even a couple of pages I visited that were supportive of abiogenesis dealt with some of Yockey's arguments in a serious fashion.

You may in fact be right on this one tortoise. I still want to learn more about what Yockey is actually arguing -- I find so much information from people using his arguments and so little from the man himself -- before I form any final judgements about how it should be treated. But, as I also said in my post #281, I cannot accept his definition of "randomness" as applied to abiogenesis, which is a problem I have with him from the start.

I will be genuinely interested to read any comments you may wish to post about Yockey and/or his work tortoise. Please feel free to fire away. Something tells me you may be quite helpful.

Truly, I am amazed that you hold Hubert P. Yockey in such contempt. He is probably twice your age (if not more) - worked with Oppenheimer on the first atomic bomb, is a physicist who studied the effects of radiation on living systems and has studied and published for decades the application of information theory to molecular biology.

I'm sure he was alive at the same time Claude Shannon developed his ground breaking theory which began the field of information theory. The second edition of his book is available: Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life

Here are some of his other publications from the “Chowder Society” website of other scientists who work in the field of information theory and molecular biology:

Yockey, Hubert P. Information Theory and Molecular Biology, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press (1992)

When is random random? Nature 344 (1990) p823, Hubert P. Yockey

Yockey, Hubert P. (1981). Self-organization origin of life scenarios and information theory. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 91, 13-31.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1979). Do overlapping genes violate molecular biology and the theory of evolution? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 80, 21-26.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1978). Can the Central Dogma be derived from information theory? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 74, 149-152.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1977a). A prescription which predicts functionally equivalent residues at given sites in protein sequences. 67, 337-343.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1977b). On the information content of cytochrome c. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 67, 345-376.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1977c). A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 67, 377-398.

Yockey, Hubert P (1974). An application of information theory to the Central Dogma and the sequence hypothesis. Journal of Theoretical Biology,.46, 369-406.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1960) The Use of Information Theory in Aging and Radiation Damage In The Biology of Aging American Institute of Biological Sciences Symposium No. 6 (160) pp338-347.

Yockey, Hubert P., Platzman, Robert P. & Quastler, Henry, eds. (1958a). Symposium on Information Theory in Biology, New York, London: Pergamon Press.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1958b). A study of aging, thermal killing and radiation damage by information theory. In Symposium on Information Theory in Biology. eds. Hubert P. Yockey, Robert Platzman & Henry Quastler, pp297-316. New York,London: Pergamon Press.

Yockey, Hubert P. (1956). An application of information theory to the physics of tissue damage. Radiation.Research, 5, 146-155.

Information in bits and bytes; Reply to Lifson's Review of "Information Theory and Molecular" Biology BioEssays v17 p85-88 (1995)

Comments on "Let there be life; Thermodynamic Reflections on Biogenesis and Evolution by Avshalom C. Elitzur Journal of Theoretical Biology in press (1995).

I assert that Yockey - with his formidable credentials – is an authoritative source for our purposes in exploring complexity in biological systems (including information theory, biosemiosis and randomness).

AFAIK, your expertise lies more specifically with strong artificial intelligence than the application of information theory of biological systems. But I could be wrong. If you are in Yockey's arena, then Tom Schneider would be one of your peers.