From: David Bradbury <dabradbury@mediaone.net>
[...]
>Reply by DABradbury 10/17/00:
>
> I here simply present the (unwelcome) modifying condition set forth by
the
>invited mathematicians Dr. Murray Eden and Marcel Schutzenberger at the
Wistar
>Symposium No. 5, "MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGES TO THE NEO-DARWINIAN
INTERPRETATION OF
>EVOLUTION", April 1966, Pg. 109. Namely:
>
> "It is our contention that if 'random' is given a serious and crucial
>interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate
is
>highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must
await
>the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws -- physical,
physico-chemical and
>biological."
I'm not familiar with the Wistar conference. Can anyone give more details
about the context of this quotation? What was the basis for this statement?
Did Eden and Schutzenberger do some sort of probability calculation, and
claim that the probability of evolution as we see it is too low to for
existing explanations to be acceptable? Or did they have some problem in
principle with the concept of randomness? If the former, then I wonder why
Dembski doesn't cite this calculation as the evidence he needs to support
his Design Inference. If the latter, that would perhaps have some bearing on
my recent discussion with Brian Harper about randomness in evolution.
Or perhaps Eden and Schutzenberger were just saying that the probability
seemed to them to be too low, but without giving any mathematical
justification for this claim.
Richard Wein (Tich)
--------------------------------
"Do the calculation. Take the numbers seriously. See if the underlying
probabilities really are small enough to yield design."
-- W. A. Dembski, who has never presented any calculation to back up his
claim to have detected Intelligent Design in life.
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