Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!rrizzo From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) Newsgroups: net.misc Subject: Re: The Probability of Life from Non-life Message-ID: <540@bbncca.ARPA> Date: Wed, 1-Feb-84 14:57:10 EST Article-I.D.: bbncca.540 Posted: Wed Feb 1 14:57:10 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 2-Feb-84 01:31:52 EST References: <120@digi-g.UUCP> Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma. Lines: 25 Right on, Mervyn Leroy! To emphasize how wrong-headed Terry Brown is, suppose despite everything we miraculously had evidence from the Creation of Ls & Ds being present in a 50/50 mix. Brown's resort to "probability" & calculations is STILL absurd. From many analagous situations successfully treated in the sciences, the situation (50/50 Ls & Ds then, only Ls in developed life) is clearly a case of a selection mechanism at work (by definition not a probabilistic device). This in turn points up Brown's equivocating use of the words "impossible" & "insurmountable" : he confuses "impossible in principle" with "impossible in fact". At best, the specific theories he criticizes are the latter. His criticisms don't impugn the ability of a "mechanistic" account to succeed. The mere fact we're able to imagine things like "selection mechanisms" shows that mechanistic accounts of the origin of life are indeed possible in principle. Brown inflates his case in another way: he misrepresents the state-of- debate in origins research by omitting to make the obvious point that Miller's production of amino acids by a discharge in a "primeval" gas mixture, which he cites, creates "life" from "nonlife", destroys for all time the first & most crucial claim of vitalists & supernaturalists, forcing creationists into quibbles over matters of detail: components of a fully worked-out account. To appreciate the enormity of such a (forced) concession, one need only call to mind the century-long debate vitalists waged (& lost) in the 1800s.