🚀 go-pugleaf

e904952p@hjc.edu.sg writes:

> ... Eyes definitely put some organisms at an advantage over
> others. But I suppose half an eye would not help much at that, what's
> more, it would be a sheer burden. But the idea that it so happened all of
> a sudden living organisms acquired fully functional eyes by some
> accident was too much for me.

Get a hold of Richard Dawkins', "Climbing Mount Improbable."  While I
disagree with his conclusion (I am a creationist), he provides, IMO, a
very good presentation of the evolution of the eye.

> Since far-from-equilibrium systems has a
> tendency to go through bifurcations and 'jump' to some other (stable)
> states, and living organisms are all open systems that are far from
> equilibrium, I somehow feel that they are related.

I doubt it.  I believe where you go wrong is in the assertion that
living systems are far from equilibrium.  If you look at organisms
around you, they are extremely stable entities.  Humans don't
spontaneously dismantle on the street as a daily occurrence; species
don't give rise to "hopeful monsters" (macro-mutation) through
breeding, or when they do they are generally dead.


-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Marcelo Cantos, Research Assistant      __/_   marcelo@mds.rmit.edu.au
Multimedia Database Systems Group, RMIT  /       _  Tel 61-3-9282-2497
723 Swanston St, Carlton VIC 3053    Aus/ralia ><_> Fax 61-3-9282-2490
Acknowledgements: errors - me; wisdom - God; funding - RMIT