Automatic cell activity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 20:39 (4026 days ago) @ David Turell


> > dhw: Yes, I lack understanding of organic chemistry, which is why I depend on experts for my information. You have drawn attention to the work of several such experts, only to find that one (Talbott) explicitly says that cells are not automatons, 
> 
> DAvid: Talbott is a philosoher, not an expert in organic chemistry. He is the frustrated one who cannot find a way out of his box.-Addendum: I went back and re-read Talbott's four articles, the main point of which is life is an emergent property from a mass of organized organic chemicals and we are just beginning to recognize that it is difficult to analyze life's 'specialism'. At no point does he look at the DNA coding and what might be its source of origin. The 'specialism' is in the emerging complexity of the genome and all its layers of control. It is from there that life's special quality begins. Like Nagel, he presents the problem for philosophy, but offers no solution.-"
 If the world is indeed intelligible — if it speaks meaningfully, as must be assumed by every scientist who tries to capture that meaning in revelatory words and ideas — then the place where we find it speaking most fully and explicitly is presumably the place where we will find its fundamental truths most fully declared. And that is in the living organism.
The "difficulty" of the organism is really just the difficulty of reducing it to mere physics and chemistry. Yes, very difficult indeed — but that's because the organism is alive, as we are alive, and because every biologist instinctively understands this life as offering more than lessons in physics and chemistry. As for the "nonliving" world: we imagine it is simpler to understand only because we are bewitched by the precision and predictability of the physical laws we find implicit in things — things of whose nature we know almost nothing." (final article)