... II. The Framework ...

values paradoxes
    “Dr. Lecomte du Noüy was an internationally known French Scientist, born in Paris in 1883 and educated in Sorbonne. From 1927 to 1937 he served as head of the Bio-Physics division of the Pasteur Institute. He escaped Nazi occupation of France in 1942 and served out the rest of his life in the United States. He wrote one of the earliest books on whether life could have appeared spontaneously on Earth.”

    “In Human Destiny, published in 1947, Lecomte du Noüy used the mathematics of probability to address two questions: What is the probability that life could have come into being spontaneously? And, was there sufficient time after the earth cooled for life to have appeared by accidental means?”

    “For the first question du Noüy showed that the probability that a configuration of a degree of dissymmetry 0.9 (90 percent unsymmetrical) would appear spontaneously was 2.02 x 10-321, or two chances out of 10321. Most mathematicians consider 1 chance in 1050 to be impossible. Dr. du Noüy further explained that a single living cell would be significantly more complex than the simplified example he used and would, therefore, have an even greater improbability of occurring.”

    “To the second question du Noüy took a single molecule of high dissymmetry and assumed chemical reactions forced by a tumbler being shaken at 500 trillion shakings per second (corresponding to the magnitude of light frequencies). He calculated that the time to form one molecule would be 10243 billion years. But since this time, which staggers the imagination, is impossibly longer than the age of the universe, it is impossible.”

    “It is important to note that Dr. du Noüy did not take issue with the basic principles of evolution. Indeed, he gave numerous examples of how evolution worked once life was found to exist on the earth. His primary effort was to illustrate the impossibly low probability that life could ever have accidentally occurred on earth. A summarizing conclusion of his book was: “From the very beginning, life has evolved as if there were a goal to attain, and as if this goal were the advent of the human conscience.” 2.7
Gibson also described some of the work of Professor Harold Morowitz, a physicist at Yale University, who published the book Energy Flow in Biology in 1968. In the book Dr. Morowitz presented calculations of the time required for random chemical reactions to form a simple bacterium. He based his calculations on optimistically rapid rates of reactions. He determined that the calculated time for the bacterium to form by random processes exceeded the 15-billion year age of the universe, never mind the 1.2 to 2 billion years that the fossil record shows it took for bacteria to appear. 2.8
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