Paul Flocken
Posts: 290
Joined: Dec. 2005
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| Quote | | The stuff from Dave is so confused I don't really know where to begin! |
Thankyou, Louis, for trying anyway. You did actually tell me what I needed to know.
I think I can follow on. DT is reducing all of chemistry to statistical mechanics, a radical and unjustified oversimplification, as exemplified by his statement here
| Quote | | Obviously you have no understanding of the hierarchy in science. Biology is explained by chemistry. Chemistry is explained by physics. Physics is explained by law and statistical mechanics. |
Atoms don't just combine in completely random ways. If they did chemistry would probably not be possible. Chemistry is more than the random tumbling of atoms; atoms bond only in definite(though many and varied) ways. Though statistical mechanics may determine when atoms have the chance to get together (and the thermo of the situation the energy available before the reactions) once together they follow laws that are far more dominant than the stat/mech that brought them together. Of course if DT gives up that stat/mech is dominant then he will have to give up that complex molecule are impossible.
| Quote | | When I read this piece of Dave's my first thought is that Dave knows nothing about the physics or chemistry he pontificates upon. |
After almost nine hundred pages you didn't know this yet? 
| Quote | | The Wikipedia article you quote is bang on in one sense. |
I wouldn't read to much into that line from wiki. It was dangerously close to a quote mine. I really happened on it by chance. I only wanted to refresh myself on the stat/mech as I only thought of it as the science that subsumed the kinetic theory of gases. Unlike DT I know what I don't know. I ran over that line and it almost seemed too perfect a statement in isolation. Especially since DT seems to be fond of the words "'polymeric amino and nucleic acids". Your explanation on cyclisation placed it in context far better than the wiki article did.
Tracy P. Hamilton,
| Quote | | Is this a request for a stat thermo lecture? |
Umm, no. But I am all ears if you are game. I knew DT was using stat/mech in an illegitimate manner, but did not know how to state it well. I may still not be doing so, but I thank the two of you for your effort.
| Quote | | Pierre deGennes got the nobel prize for that work. |
REAL SCIENCE! Amazing what real science looks like when contrasted to the tard.
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"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
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