Just yesterday while thinking through the content and criticism of Kant's OPUS POSTUMUM I realized a way to cognize the origin of the genetic code from within Kant's ostensive construction of dynamics.
This may be a significant use of a priori reasoning or just another of my seeminglyl endless speculations and thoughts but in case it is important I want you all to know you heard it first!
I had been trying on EVC to explain why I did not agree to much with ID and this if real is really good!
Brad
Here is the content of a new page on my website
http://aexion.org/codemetaphysics.aspxMetaphysics and the Genetic Code
Francis Crick (1966) has written
Why a Triplet?
We have argued that the code must have been basically a triplet code from a very early stage, so that one is not entitled to use sophisticated arguments which would apply only to a later stage, although one could argue that early organisms with doublet or quadruplet codes actually existed but became extinct, only the triplet code surviving.
However, we are inclined to suspect that the reason in this case may be a structural ‘ one. If indeed there is no direct stereochemical relationship between an amino acid and a triplet, the problem of constructing an adaptor to recognize the codon may be a difficult one to solve.
In effect, one wants to perform a rather complicated act of recognition within a rather limited space, since two adaptors need to lie side by side, and attached to adjacent codons on the mRNA, during the act of synthesis. This is probably very difficult to perform if protein is used for the adaptor. On the other hand, nucleic acid, by employing the base-pairing mechanism, can do a very neat job in a small space.
For various reasons the adaptor cannot be too simple a molecule. For example, the amino acids on adjacent adaptors need to be brought togetherthis is probably done at the present using the flexible ... CCA tail. It must have, to some extent, a definite structure and this is likely to be based on stretches of double-helix. Thus .the diameter of a double-helix (since two may have to lie side by side) may have dictated the size of the codon, in that a doublet-code (moving along two bases at a time) would present an impossible recognition problem."
I have suggested that the code arose in fulfillment of Kant’s construction of dynamics, namely that the triplet question posed above is not one of simple recognition but rather by logical constraint to circumscribe any possible balance of general repulsions and attractions (two fundamental metaphysical force kinds).
Thus the amino acids represent the filling of biological space so as to resist other bodies from entering the same reproductive continuum. Different code systems thus represent different systems of resistance and thus target different sets of impact/environmental/mutation forces. This means that there should be classes of mutagens that do not merely affect rates of mutations (randomly) as understood by Wright, but this is the maximal extent that the code can evolve.
Crick also said,
The evolution of the code sketched here has the property that it could produce a code in which the actual allocation of amino acid to codons is mainly accidental and yet related amino acids would be expected to have related codons. The theory seems plausible but as a theory it suffers from a major defect: it is too accommodating.
In a loose sort of way it can explain anything. A second disadvantage is that the early steps needed to get the system going seem to require rather a lot of chance effect. A theory of this sort is not necessarily useless if one can get at the facts experimentally. Unfortunately, in this problem this is just what is so difficult to do.
The metaphysical reading does not permit accidental relations but may express something like the principle of substance stability (Gladyshev) as the volume of resistance is enlarged (during possible growth).and it does not suggest chance effect but rather simply a better logic of the infinite in positing.
On this reading, evolution in Mendelian populations occurs because of the logical bifurcation that any pair of repulsions and attractions can compose phoronomically. Life is the dyad of this kinematics. Sex can double the impact forces dealt with in the dyad.
Thus, this organon indicates that notions of bacterial sex confuse the substance of resistance with the thermostat of the dyad. This understanding however should not be read as implicating in any way intelligent design of the genetic code.
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