Author: David Bump
Position: Office worker
Institution: GCCARD Head Start, Flint, Michigan
E-mail: david.bump@att.net
Submitted Date: May 16, 2007
Published Date: May 17, 2007
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

Speaking for the common man, I find it shocking to read that there are scientists who consider life nothing more than complex swirls formed by equalization of entropy.

Given my amateur interest in science, I'm even more astounded. How can anyone who knows much at all of the dynamic regulation of complex processes in living things breezily refer to such things as hurricanes and snowflakes as equivalent phenomena?

This is simply beyond reason. Eddies in rivers, tornadoes, hurricanes -- these don't form in order to equalize things, things in the process of equalizing happen to form swirls. Living things respond to complex internal signals and processes in order to meet various requirements which have nothing to do with equalization or entropy, except to resist being overwhelmed by them.

It's incredible that anybody, no matter how much training or how many degrees they have, could live in such a cloud of theory and mathematics that they can make such confident statements while ignoring the fact that they can't physically show how any phenomenon more life-like than a hurricane can form by raw forces of physics. Life may not require any "vital force," but neither do computers -- if physicists can demonstrate computers forming in order to maximize entropy by raw forces alone, then maybe they can start talking about living things in such a cavalier manner.