Re: Genetics as a Language System


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>

> > This is
> > the challenge for ID: to distinguish between 1-d strings which are
> > 'well-formed' and those which aren't. Without that, we can't know how
> > much of phase space is populated by 'useful' strings, how far apart
> > they tend to be, nor crucially whether the history of any modern
> > peptides founders on unbridgeable gaps.
>
> You let Sean drag you into overextending the scope of the grammar, and
> now you seem to be thoroughly confused.

I think that's a little harsh - I feel I know exactly what I'm talking
about, though I may be deluded or limited in my powers of
communication. I am happy to consider Sean's ideas to see where they
lead, without actually subscribing to them. As I think we agree, there
is not a use for the term 'grammar' at any level beyond the basic
interpretive system. What gets made - an enzyme - is a physical
product, a blob of protein which may be chemically active or not, and
'language' becomes as irrelevant as the precise words used to instruct
the creation of an apple pie.

Except that, in the case of proteins, the 'stringiness' of the template
is retained in the form of the amino acid sequence, and modification of
the product is achieved by modification of the underlying template.
Sean's frequent thesis is that the wider and wider gaps between
increasing length of legitimate English text strings is mirrored by an
asserted but not proven gap problem with increasing length of peptide
string. In the paragraph you criticize, I have left the language issue
behind - ID needs to prove that the *peptide* system is plagued by the
gap problem: more specifically, that real enzymes cannot have evolved
because of gaps in *their* history which could not have been bridged
other than by intelligent agency. The presence and nature of catalytic
activity, and the environmentally-constrained ' success' of the result,
form an *analogue* to the grammar-rules of the text system, not a
'grammar' in themselves.

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