I could not agree with this. This separation of biology from physics appears
similar to what the vitalists did. Physics does apply to biological systems
as chemistry applies to biological systems. And physics most assuredly
applies to the information contained in the DNA molecule. Why wouldn't it?
>Invoking the 2d law to claim something about organic evolution is
>like invoking gravity to explain why we spell 'cat' c-a-t instead of
>k-a-t. There is no direct connection between the complex causes in a
>complex specific historical situation and the simple principles of
>physics.
The second law applies to spelling. When I mis-type a word, that represents
an increase in entropy. Languages evolve similarly. Different
pronounciations in different regions of a country eventually leads to
different spellings and then to different languages. This too is an example
of increasing entropy. The lowest entropy situation would be for all people
to speak the same language with the same accent.
>
>Evolution to any degree is a matter of specific complex biological
>events that may or may not occur in a given physical system, be it
>open or closed, losing energy or gaining energy in an overall sense.
>
So a biological system is not a physical system? I would contend that it is.
>BTW, when I respond to mail from this list, the addressee on my
>reply is the individual sender, not the list. I have to manually
>enter the calvin.edu address. This may account for the low traffic!
That is probably your mail reader's problem. I use Eudora and when I hit
reply all, the list name appears automatically. When I hit reply, only the
individual address appears.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm