Abiognesis: excerpt from a book.

jackmell

You kinda' don't believe it huh? Chemistry is really very beautiful. Life too. And if you study them for a long time, things begin to emerge about them. Your ideas about them become more than just the sum of all that you've learned. It's a slap in the face to chemistry to doubt it can, all by it's lonesome, create something wonderful like life. That's part of the beauty and that's part of what emerges I think. But it's not easy for someone to just blindly accept that without going through the painstaking synthesis of reaching that conclusion through emergence. There are things you can only know by living a long time and for me at least, I find it easy to accept that chemistry can create life all by itself.

JorgeLobo

Extensive knowledge? In chemistry associated with hypotheses but not in abiogenesis where science sees no theory prevailing.
An expert in building and understanding roads can tell you nothing about the destination until he gets there.

Ryan_m_b

(Emphasis mine)

Why would he need to? He's an expert in building and understanding roads.

JorgeLobo

Exactly - why would the chemist need to understand or claim expertise in abiogenesis - he's only running reactions, tho' his observations may indeed be part of the reveal when it is understood.

Ryan_m_b

Again you are getting round to this odd point that you can't be an expert in something until it's met an arbitrary measure of knowledge. If you work in abiogenesis research and you are one of the top of the field then you are an expert in abiogenesis. Simples.

JorgeLobo

Not an arbitary measure of knowledge but any valid knowledge and I doubt the folks identified would even call themseves expert in abiogenesis. Th subject is abiogenesis - not chemistry of proposed reactions and, to this point, their approach is no more valid than folks claiming aliens left life on earh.

jackmell

I believe chemistry background is essential in understanding life. Personally, I cannot imagine anyone studying abiogenesis without being a chemist. No offense to the Biologist but it's really all chemistry.

Ryan_m_b

That last statement of yours is utterly ridiculous. Suggesting that abiogenesis is as unsubstantiated or as limited as the idea of aliens seeding Earth represents a massive ignorance of a field.
Why do you assume that biologists these days don't have a significant understanding of chemistry (HINT: Ever heard of biochemistry)? I did my undergrad in biology and I can't think of a single module I did that did not involve chemistry in one form or another and yes abiogenesis did come up more than once.

Pythagorean

Difficult: formulating and developing a theory. Requires and expert who has years of training and experience in the subject via their mentors who were also experts.

Easy: sitting back and ambiguously criticizing theory. Requires only minimal English skills.

jackmell

I think we should get back on topic. The thread author asked about entropy and I feel my B-level performance up there did a good job of answering his question. That's ok. No need to thank me. I was happy to help.

Pythagorean

I was sticking to the thermodynamic definition of entropy on my post about "work". This is the context in which Jorge asked about it. It's not so cleanly about order/disorder. It's defined very specifically around the temperature of the system.

Of course, I believe thermodynamic entropy is just a subset of a more general information entropy, but we can avoid speculation by just talking about thermodynamic entropy for now.

Pythagorean

Jorge, the tone of the video is unfortunate but the content was not "pedantic speculation". It's a very reasonable guess as to how life could have started. The point I only that magic or supernatural wasn't required for life. That we can take a cause/effect approach.

I guess, realistically one could complain that the video provoked religious discussion and is therefore a violation of PF.

Im an atheist, so I perhaps selfishly never realized this, I just ignored the anti-theist tones. Because again, I'm an atheist, not an anti theist.

nobahar

Bit difficult to thank you if I haven't been online. Great explanation. Perhaps a B-level, if lenient. Since you don't want a thank you, I shall save it for someone else.

Not sure why creationism has crept in...

nobahar

I found the video useful, I wouldn't consider it anti-theist, since it attacked the arguments of theists, not theists themselves.

JorgeLobo

As a biologist who has written on this subject as well as the proper place for religious concepts such as creation as philosophy and not as science and who has never pushed creationism in this forum or any other, let me explain.

Science has not (yet) created life in the lab - so there are no "experts" in the creation of life from the inanimate - abiogenesis. The path pursued to study this phenomenon is the best scientists can think of now - but it is only speculation, only hypothesis, and an unsuccessful one to this point. Remember - this is the creation of life, not more complex molecules that folks speculate could be life's presurcors by some unknown process to establish vitality. In fact, the failure to produce life by the scientific concepts pursued to this point may well indicate these folks are on the wrong track.
A video dramatizing this unvalidated hypothesis is distrubing as it communicates an ynvalidated hypothesis as having substance and is consistent with the natural philosophy concept that preceeded the development of the scientific process. Dumbed down - this concept says wise folks can imagine the answer cause they're wise. Science says they answer is in the experiment and so far there is no experiment that produced life.
As science assumes all is knowable - we will one day know the answer but as Hamlet said, there are more things on heven and earth than are dreamt of in your (natural) philosophy. So it may well be a concept not considered to this point.

bobze

The problem in your assumptions here Jorge is that "life" or rather the origin of life doesn't exist in a bubble. If it did, I'd certainly agree with you that there are no abiogenesis experts. But that isn't the case.

Abiogenesis describes the field of science that studies how abiotic agents can become biotic replicating agents. Certainly no one has ever done that in a lab, that doesn't mean however there aren't experts in the different areas of the field. Such as say--on the molecular biology of autocatalysis or prebiotic chemistry or something like say, the thermodynamics of chemical systems. As these, and many more subjects, are required to the field of study in question--There can be experts (ex·pert/ˈekspərt/
Noun: A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.) in the field of and science of abiogenesis.

I agree about the video though (though I didn't watch it, but I'll take your word for its misrepresentation of science), but then again dumbed down: Being a "biologist" who has "written" on the subject is just a nice little ol example of argument from authority. Being the science-type then, I think you should be equally as weary of any such argument made on the basis of said appeal for its lack of credibility as the video--No? (of course turning those cunning skills to introspective purposes is always much harder than flexing them extrospectively )

JorgeLobo

Sure - define it as you will - knowing alot about chemistry that hasn't established initiation of lifebut that was what they were hoping.

Truth is not arrogance. The credentials were offered largely in response to the claim of pushing creationism.