🚀 go-pugleaf

Marcelo Cantos <marcelo@mds.rmit.edu.au> writes:

>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.

Living systems are far from equilibrium.  They might be regarded as
being in a steady state configuration, but that is not equilibrium. 
The fact that our bodies don't spontaneously dismantle simply means
the rate of conversion of say, sugars, directly into CO2, and H2O is
very slow at 37C.

Bryant Fujimoto
fujimoto @ u.washington.edu