Re: how irreducibly complex systems can evolve

"On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:50:16 -0700, in article
<xNydneJKvPrFsCXX4p2dnAA@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, John Harshman stated..."

Friar Broccoli wrote:
On Sep 21, 8:04 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Friar Broccoli wrote:
On Sep 21, 5:31 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Ernest Major wrote:
[snip]
A system of only one part is not included under
the rubric of IC.
Why not? Merely because it's silly to talk about removing one part from
a system that has only one part?
Why do you think it is silly to talk about removing one part from a
_system_ with one part? You can always remove an atom, or
an elementary particle, or a percentage of the mass/energy as
a photon.
That's one problem with IC: what's a part? But why do you say that "a
system of only one part is not included under the rubric of IC"? That's
what I was asking you.

As I recall you were asking someone who knows some biology,
but if you had asked me, I would have said that a _single_ part
cannot be described as "complex", because it incorporates
the idea of compound or _multiple_ parts.

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=complex

Again, we have the ambiguity of "part". Is a distributor a single part
of a car? It's sold that way. And yet it's made of parts itself. I
suggest that a single part can indeed be complex.


And biological organs are parts of a body, yet they are made up of
cells, and cells are made up of molecules, and molecules are made
up of atoms, and atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and
neutrons, and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks.


--
---Tom S.
the failure to nail currant jelly to a wall is not due to the nail; it is due to
the currant jelly.
Theodore Roosevelt, Letter to William Thayer, 1915 July 2

.

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