Yockey H P
J Theor Biol. 1995 Oct 7;176(3):349-55. doi: 10.1006/jtbi.1995.0204.
This comment is in response to a paper previously published in the Journal entitled "Let there be life", by A. C. Elitzur. Elitzur ascribes to Eigen the proposal that life began with the appearance of an autocatalytic (self-replicating) molecule. This was discussed by biologists and philosophers in the nineteenth century. Eigen's proposal is moot: there never was a primeval soup. The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Elitzur also confuses thermodynamics with statistical mechanics. The statistical equation of Boltzmann and Planck for entropy appears in discussions of statistical mechanics, not in discussions of classical thermodynamics. Elitzur calls the Second Law of Thermodynamics an explanation of evolution. On the contrary, his mentor Eigen wrote: "In physics we know of principles which cannot be reduced to any more fundamental laws. As axioms, they are abstracted from experience, their predictions being consistent with the consequences that can be subjected to experimental test. "Typical examples are the first and second law of thermodynamics. Darwin's principle of natural selection does not fall into the category of first principles." The reader is invited to compare the material in Elitzur's paper with the discussion in Yockey's (1992) book, Information Theory and Molecular Biology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
本评论是对A. C. 埃利祖尔之前发表在《让生命存在》杂志上的一篇论文的回应。埃利祖尔将生命始于自催化（自我复制）分子出现这一观点归功于艾根。这在19世纪就被生物学家和哲学家讨论过。艾根的提议是有争议的：从来就没有过原始汤。缺乏证据本身就是不存在的证据。埃利祖尔还将热力学与统计力学混为一谈。玻尔兹曼和普朗克的熵统计方程出现在统计力学的讨论中，而非经典热力学的讨论中。埃利祖尔称热力学第二定律是对进化的一种解释。相反，他的导师艾根写道：“在物理学中，我们知道一些原理无法被简化为任何更基本的定律。作为公理，它们是从经验中抽象出来的，其预测与可接受实验检验的结果一致。”典型的例子是热力学第一和第二定律。达尔文的自然选择原理并不属于第一原理的范畴。邀请读者将埃利祖尔论文中的内容与约基（1992年）所著《信息理论与分子生物学》（剑桥大学出版社，剑桥）中的讨论进行比较。
