Evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, April 17, 2009, 02:29 (5495 days ago) @ George Jelliss

dhw cites DT saying that "To have living organization of organic molecules they have to be directed by a code filled with information. Where did the information come from?" This seems to suppose that the code pre-existed the earliest self-replicating molecules. In fact of course the code was part of the molecule. We now know that the code in DNA uses four bases. Perhaps the first replicating molecule only used two bases, and four was a later development. I throw this in as what seems a likely conjecture. - I find this to be an overly simplistic view of what is a very complex scientific and philosophic issue. Considering that a string of three letters represent the amino acids that do the coding and they code for amino acids to be added to a protein, there are 61 codon combinations that represent the 20 essential amino acids used in life. The three other codons are 'stop codes' marking the end of production of a string of amino acids. For example, AAC is a code for asparagine. That previous sentence of mine is 'decoding a code' for you. Codes carry information. How did AAC know to ask for asparagine? Or the other way around, how did the messenger RNA know what to produce when it encountered AAC? I don't know which came first. Did information encode itself, preceding the code, as George suggests, or did the DNA/RNA very early mechanism somehow fall together and the products of the code happened by chance? That last supposition is preposterous on the face of it. Life is too complex to have happened that way. - Just because we humans are smart enough to recognize a living coding system, does not tell us how the information was implanted in that code. All codes that we know outside of the codes of life carry implanted information. DNA/RNA does also. There is no other conclusion. Studying odds at this level of inquiry is of no value. That is why I dismissed the Chinese flipping coins example.