DNAunion

DNAunion: And here is something Dawkins said about physicists.

Starboy

DNAunion, there is no doubt that biologist have their work cut out for them. Wetware is probably the most complicated system that can ever be considered by mankind. Makes software look simple.

Starboy

Peter Soderqvist

TO DNA UNION

Soderqvist1: The Blind Watchmaker online is abbreviated, but I have all Dawkins's books in my home and thus I can reach the whole context. I have also most of Paul Davies's books in my home, so I can confirm that, your quote is correct (it can be found on page 20, The Fifth Miracle).

Soderqvist1: This is your unambiguous representation in a nutshell!
Davies's proposition on page 20 is that we should look in another direction than Darwinism, since the answer cannot be found there! The Blind Watchmaker is one of the items in Davies's bibliography in his book, The Cosmic Blue Print, so it is reasonable to assume that, that he has read the full context of the Blind Watchmaker, as I have done!

Was natural selection at work before the first replicator? My answer to that question is definitely YES!
The structural function of a replicator is, longevity – fertility – fidelity!
Davies's elaboration is correct, but he has for some reason left out longevity, I mean that both organisms and replicators needs longevity, because there is no survival, or existence without longevity, or stability! So obviously, the first form of natural selection was competition between different jostles, and these algorithms hade two possible outcomes, namely stable, or instable. If a group of atoms happen to fall into one stable configuration (a molecule), it will tend to stay in that way, and conversely, if some jostling ended up instable, it will tend to dissolve! The technical term for this first form of natural selection is; survival of the stable, and survival of the fittest, is only a special case, of this more general law!

PSY 1100 INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE SCIENCE MIND AND LIFE
Discussion of Chapter 10 of The Mind's I (excerpts from Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford UP, 1976, 2nd ed 1989.) 4. The origins of life, thus, evolution must have occurred in molecules long before the appearance of life on the planet, as a result of ordinary physical and chemical processes.

"If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way". The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms of groups of atoms, and a rejection of unstable ones." (p. 126) <a href="http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/psychology/cog/psy1100/dawkins.htm" target="_blank">http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/psychology/cog/psy1100/dawkins.htm</a>

The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins Excerpts and Comments By Rami E. Cremesti
Following is Dawkins’s account of the origin of life. He admits that it is “speculative” yet he asserts that it is “probably not too far from the truth”. We do not know what chemical raw materials were abundant on earth before the coming of life, but among the plausible possibilities are water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia: all simple compounds compounds known to be present on at least some of the other planets in our solar system. Chemists have tried to imitate the chemical conditions of the young earth. They have put these simple substances in a flask and supplied a source of energy such as UV light or electric sparks – artificial simulation of primordial lightning/UV light. After a few weeks of this, something interesting is usually found inside the flask: a weak brown soup containing a large number of molecules more complex than the ones originally put in. In particular, amino acids have been found – the building block of proteins, one of the two great classes of biological molecules. More recently, laboratory simulations of the chemical conditions of earth before the coming of life have yielded organic substances called purines and pyrimidines. These are the building blocks of the genetic molecule, DNA itself.

Processes analogous to these must have given rise to the ‘primeval soup’ which biologists and chemists believe constituted the seas three to four thousand million years ago. The organic substances became locally concentrated, perhaps in drying scum round the shores, or in tiny suspended droplets. Under further influence of energy such as UV light from the sun, they combined into larger molecules. Nowadays large organic molecules would not last long enough to be noticed: they would be quickly absorbed and broken down by bacteria or other living creatures. But bacteria and the rest of us are latecomers, and in these days large organic molecules could drift unmolested through the thickening broth.

At some point, a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We call it the Replicator. It may not necessarily have been the biggest of the most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself. This may seem a very unlikely sort of accident to happen, but it had hundreds of millions of years to occur. And it had to occur only once. As soon as the replicator was born, it must have spread its copies rapidly throughout the seas, until the smaller building block molecules (on which it ‘feeds’ to replicate itself) became a scarce resource.
<a href="http://cremesti.com/portfolio/technical_writing/Academic_Research_Papers/The_Selfish_Gene_Scientific_Academic_Writing_Sampl e.htm" target="_blank">http://cremesti.com/portfolio/technical_writing/Academic_Research_ Papers/The_Selfish_Gene_Scientific_Academic_Writing_Sampl e.htm</a>

From the book The Selfish Gene, Chapter 2 the Replicators page 18: Should we then call the original replicator molecules "living"? Who cares? I might say to you " Darwin was the greatest man who has ever lived", and you might say No, Newton was, but I hope we would not prolong the argument! The point is that no conclusion of substance would be affected whichever way our argument was resolved. The facts of the lives and achievement of Newton, and Darwin remain totally unchanged whether we label them great or not. Similarly, the story of the replicator molecules probably happened something like the way I am telling it, regardless of whether we choose to call them "living". Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like "living" does not mean, it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world. Whether we call the early replicators living or not, they were the ancestors of life; they were our founding fathers

The Blind Watchmaker online: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design By Richard Dawkins, 1986: Chapter 6 - Origins and miracles: So we have arrived at the following paradox. If a theory of the origin of life is sufficiently 'plausible' to satisfy our subjective judgment of plausibility, it is then too 'plausible' to account for the paucity of life in the universe as we observe it. According to this argument, the theory we are looking for has got to be the kind of theory that seems implausible to our limited, Earth-bound, decade-bound imaginations. Seen in this light, both Cairns-Smith's theory and the primeval-soup theory seem if anything in danger of erring on the side of being too plausible!
<a href="http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Books/blind.htm" target="_blank">http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Books/blind.htm</a>

The Blind Watchmaker online Preface!
Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a doubly satisfying theory. A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe, wherever life may be found.

Soderqvist1: Richard Dawkins has coined the word, Universal Darwinism in his theory of Origin of life in the universe. Your allegation that natural selection cannot explain where the first replicator came from isn't truth. Your misunderstanding is based on your idea that natural selection applies only to replicators. But as you can see know, that the first form of natural selection was the survival of the stable, without any replicator involved , this is the theory of the selfish gene! Of course, no one was around there in the beginning, so it is speculative, but on the other hand, the theory of the selfish gene pointing to that, it is not too far from the true, as Dawkins has said in chapter 2 – The Replicator, and the theory of the selfish gene competes with 10 – 12 similar primeval soup theories, and these are not too far from each other either.

You are free to point out flaws in my representation, and in my English too!

[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>