Re: Chemical bonding inside living vs non-living things

From: raconte (raconte_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 12/02/04 

Date: 1 Dec 2004 17:04:30 -0800

abdul.ahad@ntlworld.com (AA Institute) wrote in message news:<adbf5bc1.0412010945.47cf6d6a@posting.google.com>...

> And I'm still just as puzzled... What I find so impossible to accept
> is that you start off with a single celled egg inside a womb and then
> through some mysterious magic it turns itself into a baby over just 9
> months! *WHAT* is that mysterious force that does this? Yeah, sure
> I've read chapter and verse in the science books about how the organs
> develop, how the oxygen is drawn via the placenta from the mother's
> blood stream, how the whole thing comes together, etc. It doesn't
> really answer my question though!
>

You're complicating the problem by oversimplifying it. You don't
start
with a single cell and get a baby. You start with a single cell, and
feed it complex organic molecules, in a conditioned environment, for
nine months, to get a baby. That single cell isn't a sudden
development. It's the cumulative effect of simpler forms.

Similarly, life didn't spring from some inorganic molecules one warm
spring day. It's been building on self-replicating, carbon-based
molecules over a very long time. There is no one split-second, before
which, everything was water, salt and minerals, and after which was a
simple life form. Likewise, simple organic molecules are the building
blocks, over the long-term (eveolving into life forms) and the
short-term (what'd you eat today), of larger complex
living things.

The replication of DNA, and the catalysis of proteins are a bit more
dependant on weaker chemical bonds (hydrogen bonding, van der waals)
than the ionic and covalent bonds of inorganic chemistry. That's part
of the limitations of describing life entirely as a chemical process,
living things work within a limited range of conditions, outside of
which, the reactions fail, and the living thing dies. You can't
reverse the "death reaction" because another living thing starts
rotting the carcass -- before the brain even dies.

Chemistry is the same in industry or living things, but when industry
wants fixed nitrogen, it uses platinum and pressure -- not a vat of
legume nodules.

Oh, one last thing for the divine watchmaker crowd -- if someone
offered me a camera designed and manufactured like the vertebrate eye,
I'd send it back. Life is as magical as Santa Claus stories -- you
have to have them both, but no one can explain why.

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