One occurred to me today -- let me pass it along.
The last time I worked on a Habitat for Humanity house, I was part of a
crew that put up ceiling drywall. If you have not done that -- it
involves raising fairly heavy 4x12 1/2" thick plasterboard sections to a
place 8 feet above the floor and screwing them into the joists.
Not easy!
I made a T section just over 8 feet tall with the T at the top and was,
for the most part, the guy who jammed the T section into place under the
plasterboard and held it while my colleagues did the fastening. Much of
my day was spent holding in place heavy objects without moving them.
When I came home, if friend wife asked "did you do a lot of work?" I'd
have to answer her (scientifically) "no," for work = force times distance
in physics! But philosophically (and actually) I assure I did a lot of
"work."
Here is the deal, Kevin. In most sciences, precision of definition is all
important, and so, in physics, work = force x distance. But the word
"work" admits of a lot more definitions, and we have to deal with these
too!
In my discussion with Joseph, I was deliberately using the word
"abiogenesis" in the way Huxley defined it in 1870, to mean that process
which we assume (scientifically) to have taken place long ago, a process
which we hold (scientifically) to have led from non-life to life. One (or
more) specific processes which we assume happened. It is not "wrong" to
use that same word for present day experiments, but one needs to
recognize the prior usage and not force fit today's definition onto the
same word used in a different sense.
That is why I carefully defined "abiogenesis(1) and abiogenesis(2). They
refer to different things. The first to one or more presumably historical
processes, the second to a multitude of present day lab procedures, both
real and speculative.
Best...
Burgy
___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]