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From: prins@cornell.UUCP (Jan Prins)
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: The missing step -- self-reproducing organisms
Message-ID: <2262@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 19:23:56 EST
Article-I.D.: cornell.2262
Posted: Fri Nov  9 19:23:56 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Nov-84 21:30:09 EST
References: <>
Reply-To: prins@gvax.UUCP (Jan Prins)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 28
Summary: 

Evelyn/Mark Leeper write:
>
>[The] step of going from something that is merely alive to a self-reproducing
>(SR) cell ... seems to me, is the biggest step of the three.  It
>is one thing for the amino acids to form something that in some abstract
>sense is alive, it is quite another for this thing to be an SR organism.
>

This statement seems turned around to me.  I find the creation of complex self-
replicating molecules much less problematic than labelling them 'life-like'.

Richard Dawkins feels 'survival of the fittest' can apply at a molecular level:
If a large supply of 'parts' is available in the organic soup, then a simple
self-replicating molecule (one that, in the presence of the right components
incorporates them into one or more self-similar structures) will eventually
become the most prevalent molecule in the soup.  Unless, of course, there
are several such molecules, in which case the 'fittest' (i.e. making use of
more readily available parts, or having a higher probability of replication
succes) will become the more numerous, by definition (the problem with
these evolutionary theories is that they're dangerously close to being
tautologies!).  

I take the sequence of events leading to ever-more complex self-replicating
structures to be not unplausible.  That it should proceed inexorably in the 
direction of 'intelligence' I find more unlikely and mysterious.

                           "We started small"
                                cornell!prins