Rick Searle has a post up on Life: Inevitable or Accident? at his website Utopia or Dystopia. In it he discusses the somewhat contrasting ideas of Jeremy England and Henry Gee. I touched a little on Jeremy England in a post a few months ago.
England’s idea seems to be that the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes life inevitable. He has been quoted as saying that “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.” Really? Could we shine a light on rock and get life? Let’s me a little more generous with England’s comment. Perhaps it was taken out of context or was a bit of hyperbole. I happen to think the Second Law of Thermodynamics does have a lot to do with life and so have a great many others. The real trick is showing how injecting energy into a a group of atoms can create self-sustaining metabolism and reproduction. It may be with the right types of atoms at the right temperature, given time, life is inevitable, but showing exactly how is the difficult part. A group of scientists at Cambridge University have recently made real progress in this regard.
Gee’s ideas have more to do with the evolution of complexity. Rick Searle in his post writes: “His objective is to do away, once and for all, with what he feels is a common misconception that evolution is leading towards complexity and progress and that the highest peak of this complexity and progress is us- human beings.” I happen to think that evolution is leading towards complexity and that it might even have been leading towards something somewhat like us. My idea does not come from any belief in the supernatural but rather from how I think Nature plays the lottery.
