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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Bob Howard <rmhoward@omninet.net.au>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Out of Control
  • Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:04:52 +0800




"S.K. Harrison" wrote:

[snip]

> I doubt that we need learn how to create chiral
> products to have a chance to overthrow vitalism.
> We can chuck this ghost in the machine with the
> help of a little Occamite observation.
>
> In spite of that criticism I remain interested in
> the differentiation of life from non-life. But y'
> know, although I ain't a chemist, your
> explanation seems like it's missing something.
> Can you tell me more about chiral products? If
> you can, I'd like you to flesh-out the comment
> about the left or right-handedness of molecules
> and how it pertains to the aforementioned
> differentiation.
>
>

Chirality is a chemists way of distinguishing a left handed thread from a
right handed
thread. Any three dimensional object which has a front and a back and a left
and a
right that can be distinguished from each other is chiral. So a carbon atom
with for
adjoining atoms (or groups of atoms) that are different is of necessity
chiral. In
living organisms amino acids are left handed and sugars are right handed.
Constructing
sugars or amino acids from their constituent parts in a laboratory results in
a
racemic mixture (i.e. a mixture containing equal quantities of left and right
handed
products).

With much hand waving biochemists postulate that once a particular handed
form gained
a fractional domination in some early proto-life then a cascading effect took
place
resulting in in the domination of one kind of molecule over the other.

I'm not suggesting that we reinstitute a 'vital' force just that the argument
that was
used to overthrow the vitalist heresy threw the bay out with the bath water
as it
were.

The result was the construction of a synthetic chemistry which is
antithetical to
living processes.

I am further not suggesting that the boundary between living and non-living
molecules
is complete and inviolate. Rather that it is fuzzy in parts. Chlorination of
carbon
atoms occurs in nature - there is a possibility that in some out of the way
Amazonian
fungi that they have devised a way to join more than one chlorine atom to a
carbon
atom. However, the validity of the research in this area promoted assiduously
as it is
by chemical companies intent upon justifying their products makes this
dubious.

The more i learn about this the more certain I am that the boundary between
life and
non living organic chemistry is less fuzzy. That is much of the fuzziness may
well be
due to ignorance.

The current constructivist craze for artificial life in computers - is just
that - a
craze. It fails to recognize the nature of life because it fails to recognize
the big
lie that has been maintained by organic chemistry. Life does not exist in
computers.
Food does not exist in computers. Pretending otherwise is fiddling while Rome
burns.

Bob Howard





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