>
>>BH>...The intents of one of the Yockey posts that I submitted to the
>>reflector was to uncouple Darwin from the prebiotic soup paradigm.
>>Yockey's main point here is that people try to tie Darwin to this in
>>view of his famous "warm little pond" quote.
>
>SJ>There is no doubt that Darwin wrote it and can justly claim to be
>>the father of "the prebiotic soup paradigm":
>
>BH>Then why didn't he?
>
>I've though I had already answered that with a quote from deBeer's
>biography of Darwin? Maybe it was some other post? Here it is again:
>
Here I will appeal to Denis Lamoureux's comments on trucklism.
Thanks Dennis, I learned a new word. :-)
[...]
>BH>my favorite line:
>>
>> "Everyone has the right to float tentative ideas and even nonsense
>> to his friends in his personal correspondence without responsibility
>> being assumed by snoopers"
>>
>>Yockey has a way with words ;-)
>
SJ:==
>No doubt, but Yockey overlooks that *Darwin* was not just anyone! His
>private correspondence and journals have actually been published and
>are in libraries throughout the world. Those who have done this must
>assume that Darwin did not just dash off "tentative ideas and even
>nonsense", but thought deeply and seriously about what he wrote. In
>addition, Darwin's "warm little pond" letter is widely repeated in OOL
>literature including by such luminaries as Orgel and Shapiro. Yockey
>is being somewhat disingenous to claim that this is just "personal
>correspondence" (like other people's) and that those who read it are
>"snoopers".
>
Do you think Darwin had any idea that his personal letters would
be published?
I think any scholar that did not consider the possibility that
private correspondence may contain "tentative ideas and even
nonsense" would not be much of a scholar. Surely Darwin's
parenthetical remark "and oh! what a big if" suggests that
Darwin thought the idea tentative at best. Also note that
the quote begins "It is often said ..." indicating that the
subject was commonly discussed at the time. I also read somewhere
(but can't seem to find the reference) that Darwin's father
Erasmus also discussed the warm little pond. In any event,
there seems good reason to doubt that the idea was original
to Darwin.
[...]
>BH>If Darwin had regarded the "warm little pond" at all seriously in
>>1871 he had changed his mind by 1872. What Darwin "vividly raised"
>>and published as his considered opinion, and what he was prepared
>>to take responsibility for on the question of origin of life is
>>in Chapter XV of the 1872 edition of _Origin of Species_:
>>
>> ...It is no valid objection
>> (to the theory of natural selection) that science as yet throws
>> no light on the far higher problem of the essence or the origin
>> of life. Who can explain the essence of the attraction of gravity?
>
>[...]
>
>Again, Yockey confuses what Darwin thought and "what he was prepared
>to take responsibility for".
>
If he wasn't prepared to take responsibility for the idea then:
(a) perhaps he didn't think the idea had much merit
(b) he doesn't deserve credit for it. IMHO, proper credit is
due the first person who *was* willing to take responsibility
for the idea by publishing it and defending it publicly.
>>This passage makes it clear that Darwin's published opinion on the
>>nature and origin of life actually anticipated the position of
>>Niels Bohr (1933) in his famous _Light and Life_ lecture that,
>>like the quantum of action that appears as an irrational element
>>from the point of view of classical mechanical physics, life
>>must be accepted as an axiom, rather than the dialectical
>>materialist scenario, usually attributed to Oparin and Haldane
>>that life is a property of matter.
>>-- Hubert Yockey, J. Theor. Biol. (1995) 176:349-355.
>
SJ:==
>Darwin did not claim that the "origin of life...must be accepted as an
>axiom". He just claimed it was "unknown":
>
The key in the Darwin quote was his gravity illustration:
"Who can explain the essence of the attraction of gravity?
No one now objects to following out the results consequent on
this unknown element of attraction ..."
IOW, the "unknown element of attraction" is accepted as an axiom.
[...]
========================
Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
========================