Re: Dembski and Nelson at MIT and Tufts

Kevin O'Brien (Cuchulaine@worldnet.att.net)
Tue, 6 Apr 1999 13:04:51 -0600

You are the one spouting nonsense. Quantum mechanics is a whole field of
research involving many different phenomena and mechanisms. Each one of
those people you listed won the prize for investigating the specific
phenomenon and/or mechanism that they alone (or with a few colleagues) were
investigating; they DID NOT win the prize for some general, nonspecific
"contribution to the study of quantum mechanics". In other words,
Heisenberg won the prize specifically for his development of the uncertainty
principle (or whatever), not for quantum mechanics in general.

Abiogenesis is a single phenomenon with a single goal: figuring out life
derived from non-life. Everyone who investigates it works for that specific
goal; the goal was accomplished, not by one person or lab, but by dozens of
persons each in dozens of labs. If a Nobel Prize were to be awarded simply
for the creation of life from non-life, you would be hard pressed to find
any one or two or six or dozen people who made the most significant
contributions; you would have to award it to a hundred or more. The same
was true for the identification of enzymes as catalysts, or are you
suggesting that because no one has won the Nobel Prize for that, enzymology
is untrue?

Kevin L. O'Brien