DesertFox
01-06-2004, 09:28 PM
From At Home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman, 1995, Oxford University Press, pp. 44-5:
Scientific American, Nobel laureate George Wald] wonders how it could be that a collection of molecules came together in just the right way to form a living cell. One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet we are here. Wald goes on to argue that, with very many trials, the unthinkably improbable becomes virtually assured. Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of 2 billion years. (Wald wrote in 1954; we now say 4 billion years.) Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable; and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait; time itself performs the miracles.
But critics arose, critics of high renown, to argue that even 2 or 4 billion years was not enough time for life to arise by pure happenstance, not by vast orders of magnitude. In his book Origins, Robert Shapiro calculates that in the history of the earth, there could conceivably have been 2.5 x 10<sup>51</sup> attempts to create life by chance. This is one hell of a lot of trials. But is it enough? We need to know the probability of success per trial.
Shapiro continues with an effort to calculate the odds of attaining, by chance, something like E. coli. He begins with an argument by two astronomers, Sir Fred Hoyle and N. C. Wickramasinghe. Rather than estimate the chances for obtaining an entire bacterium, these authors try to calculate the chances for obtaining a functioning enzyme. They begin with the set of 20 amino acids that are used to construct enzymes. If the amino acids were selected at random and arranged in random order, what would be the chances of obtaining an actual bacterial enzyme with 200 amino acids? The answer is obtained by multiplying the probability for each correct amino acid in the sequence, 1 in 20, together 200 times, yielding 1 in 20<sup>200</sup>, a vastly low probability. But since more than one amino sequence might be able to function to catalyze a given reaction, the authors concede a probability of 1 in 10<sup>20</sup>. But now the coup de grace: to duplicate a bacterium, it would not suffice to create a single enzyme. Instead, it would be necessary to assemble about 2,000 functioning enzymes. The odds against this would be 1 in 10 <sup>20x2,000</sup>, or 1 in 10<sup>40,000</sup>. These exponential notations are easy to state, but difficult to take to heart. The total number of hydrogen atoms in the universe is something like 10<sup>60</sup>. So 10<sup>40,000</sup> is vast beyond vast, unimaginably hyperastronomical. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe gave up on spontaneous generation, since the likelihood of the event was comparable to the chances that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.
From the article, Let There Be Light: Modern Cosmogony and Biblical Creation by Owen Gingerich in the compendium volume, The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, edited by Timothy Ferris, 1991, Little, Brown and Company, pp. 392-3:
... Early in this [20th] century, after the work of Darwin, which emphasized the fitness of organisms for their various environments, the chemist I. J. Henderson wrote a fascinating book entitled The Fitness of the Environment, which pointed out that the organisms themselves would not exist except for certain properties of matter. He argued for the uniqueness of carbon as the chemical basis of life, and everything we have learned since then reinforces his argument.
Carbon is the fourth most common atom in our galaxy, after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen, but it isn't very abundant. A carbon nucleus can be made by merging three helium nuclei, but a triple collision is tolerably rare. It would be easier if two helium nuclei would stick together to form beryllium, but beryllium is not very stable. Nevertheless, sometimes before the two helium nuclei can come unstuck, a third helium nucleus strikes home, and a carbon nucleus results. And here the internal details of the carbon nucleus become interesting: it turns out that there is precisely the right resonance within the carbon to help this process along. Without it, there would be relatively few carbon atoms. Similarly, the internal details of the oxygen nucleus play a critical role. Oxygen can be formed by combining helium and carbon nuclei, but the corresponding resonance level in the oxygen nucleus is half a percent too low for the combination to stay together easily. Had the resonance level in the carbon been 4 percent lower, there would be essentially no carbon. Had that level in the oxygen been only half a percent higher, virtually all of the carbon would have been converted to oxygen. Without that carbon abundance, neither you nor I would be here now.
I am told told that Fred Hoyle, who together with William Fowler first noticed the remarkable arrangement of carbon and oxygen nuclear resonances, has said that nothing has shaken his atheism as much as this discovery. In the November 1981 issue of Engineering and Science, the Cal Tech alumni magazine, Hoyle writes: "Would you not say to yourself, 'Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly miniscule'? Of course you would. ... A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."
Scientific American, Nobel laureate George Wald] wonders how it could be that a collection of molecules came together in just the right way to form a living cell. One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet we are here. Wald goes on to argue that, with very many trials, the unthinkably improbable becomes virtually assured. Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of 2 billion years. (Wald wrote in 1954; we now say 4 billion years.) Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable; and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait; time itself performs the miracles.
But critics arose, critics of high renown, to argue that even 2 or 4 billion years was not enough time for life to arise by pure happenstance, not by vast orders of magnitude. In his book Origins, Robert Shapiro calculates that in the history of the earth, there could conceivably have been 2.5 x 10<sup>51</sup> attempts to create life by chance. This is one hell of a lot of trials. But is it enough? We need to know the probability of success per trial.
Shapiro continues with an effort to calculate the odds of attaining, by chance, something like E. coli. He begins with an argument by two astronomers, Sir Fred Hoyle and N. C. Wickramasinghe. Rather than estimate the chances for obtaining an entire bacterium, these authors try to calculate the chances for obtaining a functioning enzyme. They begin with the set of 20 amino acids that are used to construct enzymes. If the amino acids were selected at random and arranged in random order, what would be the chances of obtaining an actual bacterial enzyme with 200 amino acids? The answer is obtained by multiplying the probability for each correct amino acid in the sequence, 1 in 20, together 200 times, yielding 1 in 20<sup>200</sup>, a vastly low probability. But since more than one amino sequence might be able to function to catalyze a given reaction, the authors concede a probability of 1 in 10<sup>20</sup>. But now the coup de grace: to duplicate a bacterium, it would not suffice to create a single enzyme. Instead, it would be necessary to assemble about 2,000 functioning enzymes. The odds against this would be 1 in 10 <sup>20x2,000</sup>, or 1 in 10<sup>40,000</sup>. These exponential notations are easy to state, but difficult to take to heart. The total number of hydrogen atoms in the universe is something like 10<sup>60</sup>. So 10<sup>40,000</sup> is vast beyond vast, unimaginably hyperastronomical. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe gave up on spontaneous generation, since the likelihood of the event was comparable to the chances that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.
From the article, Let There Be Light: Modern Cosmogony and Biblical Creation by Owen Gingerich in the compendium volume, The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, edited by Timothy Ferris, 1991, Little, Brown and Company, pp. 392-3:
... Early in this [20th] century, after the work of Darwin, which emphasized the fitness of organisms for their various environments, the chemist I. J. Henderson wrote a fascinating book entitled The Fitness of the Environment, which pointed out that the organisms themselves would not exist except for certain properties of matter. He argued for the uniqueness of carbon as the chemical basis of life, and everything we have learned since then reinforces his argument.
Carbon is the fourth most common atom in our galaxy, after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen, but it isn't very abundant. A carbon nucleus can be made by merging three helium nuclei, but a triple collision is tolerably rare. It would be easier if two helium nuclei would stick together to form beryllium, but beryllium is not very stable. Nevertheless, sometimes before the two helium nuclei can come unstuck, a third helium nucleus strikes home, and a carbon nucleus results. And here the internal details of the carbon nucleus become interesting: it turns out that there is precisely the right resonance within the carbon to help this process along. Without it, there would be relatively few carbon atoms. Similarly, the internal details of the oxygen nucleus play a critical role. Oxygen can be formed by combining helium and carbon nuclei, but the corresponding resonance level in the oxygen nucleus is half a percent too low for the combination to stay together easily. Had the resonance level in the carbon been 4 percent lower, there would be essentially no carbon. Had that level in the oxygen been only half a percent higher, virtually all of the carbon would have been converted to oxygen. Without that carbon abundance, neither you nor I would be here now.
I am told told that Fred Hoyle, who together with William Fowler first noticed the remarkable arrangement of carbon and oxygen nuclear resonances, has said that nothing has shaken his atheism as much as this discovery. In the November 1981 issue of Engineering and Science, the Cal Tech alumni magazine, Hoyle writes: "Would you not say to yourself, 'Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly miniscule'? Of course you would. ... A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."