Re: The Mess the Designer (?) Made (Shall We Rub His Little Nose

Terry M. Gray (grayt@lamar.colostate.edu)
Fri, 10 Dec 1999 10:39:35 -0700

Mike,

You wrote:

>
>And guess what? It has become increasingly clear that cells are anything
>but messy. This view may have been held in the 60s, but we now know
>that cellular life exists in such a way that precise timing, precise
>positioning,
>and precise arrangement is crucial. Or consider my posts on proofreading.
>Every step along the pathway of information flow is proofread (DNA replication
>transcription, the charging of tRNA, the binding of tRNA to mRNA). This
>is the very opposite of messy and opportunistic.
>
>So why think such a clean and sophisticated reality is the product of
>such a messy and opportunistic mechanism?
>

I'm not sure that we're saying that the end product is messy (although
that's not always so clear). We're saying that the process by which we get
to the end product is messy. I.e. historical, contingent, etc.

TG

_________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D., Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department, Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
grayt@lamar.colostate.edu http://www.chm.colostate.edu/~grayt/
phone: 970-491-7003 fax: 970-491-1801