Could monkeys type the 23rd Psalm?
by Russell Grigg
Images Wikipedia.org
Thomas Huxley (left) and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the protagonists at the famous
debate on the subject of evolution at the Oxford meeting of the British Association,
June 30, 1860
On 30 June 1860, there occurred an event which, in the minds of many people, was
the turning point for the public acceptance of the theory of evolution in its confrontation
with Christianity. This event was the debate between the agnostic Thomas Huxley,
who came to be known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, and the Anglican Bishop
of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, son of the famous anti-slavery politician, William
Wilberforce. The debate was held at a meeting of the British Association, Oxford,
of which Bishop Wilberforce was a vice-president, and was sparked by the publication
of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species seven months earlier, in November
1859.
Wilberforce was an experienced and skilful debater. As well as being a theologian,
he was an able naturalist. He had also acquired a first in mathematics in his graduate
days at Oxford. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society, and had the unusual combination
of being both Professor of Theology and Professor of Mathematics at the University
of Oxford. He was well versed in Darwin’s theory as, shortly before the debate
took place, he had written a 19,000-word review of the Origin, which was
published in the Quarterly Review, July 1860. When Darwin read this review
his comment was:
‘It is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural
parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties.’1
Wilberforce began the debate and, after making several scientific points, concluded
with Paley’s argument that a watch implies the existence of a watchmaker,
and similarly design in nature implies the existence of a Designer.
Huxley then arose and is said to have put forward his now well-known argument that
six eternal monkeys or apes2 typing
on six eternal typewriters with unlimited amounts of paper and ink could, given
enough time, produce a Psalm, a Shakespearean sonnet, or even a whole book, purely
by chance that is, by random striking of the keys.
In the course of his presentation Huxley pretended to find the 23rd Psalm
among the reams of written gibberish produced by his six imaginary apes at their
typewriters. He went on to make his point that, in the same way, molecular movement,
given enough time and matter, could produce Bishop Wilberforce himself, purely by
chance and without the work of any Designer or Creator.
It seems, from the various accounts of what happened (mostly letters written by
Darwin’s followers, as no report on the debate was published by the British
Association), that the worthy Bishop did not have an answer to this line of reasoning.
This is rather surprising in view of his erudition in the realm of Mathematics.
So let us consider some answers to Huxley’s argument—an argument that
is still advanced from time to time by modern-day evolutionists—that chance
is a better explanation for origins than design.
Chance vs. Design
Let us imagine a special typewriter, ‘user-friendly’ to apes, with 50
keys, comprised of 26 capital letters, 10 numbers, one space bar, and 13 symbols
for punctuation, etc. For the sake of simplicity we shall disregard lower-case letters
and settle for typing all to be in capitals, and we shall disregard leap years.
How long would it take an operator, on the average, to correctly type the 23rd
Psalm, by randomly striking keys? To obtain the answer, let us first consider the
first verse of the Psalm, which reads: ‘THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT
WANT.’
According to the Multiplication Rule of Probability (in simplified form)3 the chance of correctly typing the three designated
letters ‘THE’ from possibilities is 1 in 50 x 50 x 50, which equals
125,000. At a rate of one strike per second, the average time taken to make 125,000
strikes is 34.72 hours.
The chance of randomly typing the eight keys (seven letters and one space) in the
right sequence for the two words THE LORD is 1 in 50 x 50 … eight times (i.e.
508). This is 1 chance in 39,062 billion. There are 31,536,000 seconds
in a year, so the average time taken in years to make 39,062 billion strikes at
the rate of one strike per second would be 1,238,663.7 years.
The time taken on the average to correctly type the whole of verse 1 of the 23rd
Psalm, which contains 42 letters, punctuation, and spaces, would be 5042
divided by 31,536,000 (seconds in a year), which is 7.2 x 1063 years.
And the time taken on the average to correctly type the whole of the 23rd
Psalm, made up of 603 letters, verse numbers, punctuation, and spaces, would be
50603 divided by 31,536,000 which is 9.552 x 101016 years.4 If the letter ‘b’ stands
for billion (109), this could be written as about one bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb years.
By comparison, the evolutionists’ age of the Earth is (only) 4.6 billion years,
and the evolutionists’ age of the universe is (only) almost 15 billion years.
Probability of a DNA molecule forming by chance
When we apply probability theory to the correct arrangement of a DNA molecule, a
similar situation is seen, as per the following quotation:
‘When we come to examine the simplest known organism capable of independent
existence, the situation becomes even more fantastic. In the DNA chain of the chromosome
of the bacterium E. coli, a favourite organism used by molecular biologists,
the [DNA] helix consists of 3-4 million base pairs. These are all arranged in a
sequence that is ’meaningful’ in the sense that it gives rise to enzyme
molecules which fit the various metabolites and products used by the cell. This
unique sequence represents a choice of one out of 102,000,000 alternative
ways of arranging the bases! We are compelled to conclude that the origin
of the first life was a unique event, which cannot be discussed in terms of probability.’5
Notice that this refers only to the correct arrangement of already formed
bases. Harold J. Morowitz, Professor of Biophysics at Yale University, has taken
into account the covalent bond energies required to actually form such a DNA molecule.
He arrives at a probability figure for the spontaneous formation of one complete
bacterium of Escherichia coli in the history of the universe, of less than
one chance in 10 to the power 100 billion (which can be written 10-100,000,000,000).6
Such numbers are far too large for most people to comprehend. However, the
late Sir Fred Hoyle , who was Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University
and was not a Christian, illustrated the point this way:
’Now imagine 1050 blind persons [that’s 100,000 billion billion
billion billion billion people—standing shoulder to shoulder, they would more
than fill our entire planetary system] each with a scrambled Rubik cube and try
to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form.
You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling [random variation] of just
one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the
biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance
in a primordial soup here on Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.7
(Emphasis added.)
Another of Professor Hoyle’s very expressive analogies is that the chance
that even the simplest self-reproducing life forms might have emerged in this way
(i.e. by evolutionary processes) is comparable with the chance that ‘a tornado
sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.’8
(See also Q&A: Probability).
Some objections countered
What about natural selection?
Lest it be thought that the Darwinian concept of natural selection could increase
the chance of forming life (i.e. that with time, mutations may contribute superior
survival value to some members of a species), it should be realised that natural
selection could only work on a living organism that could produce offspring. By
its very definition it could not work on non-living chemicals,
as pointed out by leading evolutionist Dobzhansky.8
To try to get around these insurmountable difficulties, some evolutionists are now
postulating that the universe is eternal, because if time is eternal, they argue,
then theoretically any event is certain to occur.
Eternal universe?
The idea of an eternal universe cannot be substantiated, however, because the universe
is slowly approaching ‘heat death’ in accordance with the second law
of thermodynamics. Heat death will occur when all the energy of the cosmos has been
degraded to random heat energy, with random motions of molecules and uniform low-level
temperatures. If the universe were eternal, this state would have been reached ‘a
long time ago’. The fact that the universe is not dead is clear evidence that
it is not infinitely old. For more information, see Who created God?
‘Somewhere, sometime’
To overcome this problem, Huxley’s modern-day supporters are ready to talk
about previous universes before the present one, and other spaces ‘beyond’
our space. They then argue that, no matter how small the probability of an event,
it will occur with the probability one (certainty) ‘somewhere, sometime’,
as long as the probability is not actually zero (impossibility). Moreover, they
claim that the reason we observe the realisation of the totally unlikely event is
that it can only be observed by the sentient beings it produced. However, as Professor
A.M. Hasofer (Statistician, University of New South Wales) has pointed out in a
private communication,9 there is a
fatal scientific weakness in such reasoning, because such a model fails Karl Popper’s
fundamental criterion of scientific acceptability, that it be falsifiable.
Professor Hasofer writes:
‘The problem [of falsifiability of a probabilistic statement] has been dealt
with in a recent book by G. Matheron, entitled Estimating and Choosing: An Essay
on Probability in Practice (Springer-Verlag, 1989). He proposes that a
probabilistic model be considered falsifiable if some of its consequences have zero
(or in practice very low) probability. If one of these consequences is observed,
the model is then rejected.
‘The fatal weakness of the monkey argument, which calculates probabilities
of events “somewhere, sometime”, is that all events, no matter how unlikely
they are, have probability one as long as they are logically possible, so that the
suggested model can never be falsified. Accepting the validity of Huxley’s
reasoning puts the whole probability theory outside the realm of verifiable science.
In particular, it vitiates the whole of quantum theory and statistical mechanics,
including thermodynamics, and therefore destroys the foundations of all modern science.
For example, as Bertrand Russell once pointed out, if we put a kettle on a fire
and the water in the kettle froze, we should argue, following Huxley, that a very
unlikely event of statistical mechanics occurred, as it should “somewhere,
sometime”, rather than trying to find out what went wrong with the experiment!’
Reversibility—the Achilles’ Heel of biogenesis by chance
There is one other aspect that needs to be considered—yet another fatal flaw
in Huxley’s reasoning and that of his modern-day followers—when applied
to the idea of biogenesis by chance or the formation of living cells from chance
combinations of molecules. Let us consider the situation where time is infinite,
and probability equals one. We have just seen that evolutionists do not have infinite
time, but just suppose they did, could Huxley’s argument be sustained? In
particular, could chance combinations of molecules produce life (or even Bishop
Samuel Wilberforce), if there was no restriction on time?
The idea that life can form spontaneously from non-life involves the formation of
proteins10 from peptides which have
formed from amino acids, (which have formed from the gases in a reducing atmosphere).11 However, the biochemical reactions
involved in the formation of proteins from peptides and peptides from amino acids
are reversible—they go the other way as well.12
This is represented below in the simplest reaction of two amino acids forming a
dipeptide while releasing a molecule of water (the R in the table stands for any
one of 20 different functional groups. The different R groups are responsible for
the wide variety of proteins, and the precise sequences are very specialised and
improbable):
|
NH2–CHR–COOH
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+
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NH2–CHR′–COOH
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→
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NH2–CHR–CO–NH–CHR′–COOH
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+
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H2O
|
|
|
|
|
Condensation Reaction
|
|
|
|
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amino acid 1
|
+
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amino acid 2
|
combine to give
|
dipeptide
|
+
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water
|
|
|
|
|
↔
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(reversible — dipeptide breaks down in water)
|
|
|
|
Under the right conditions, the condensation continues, with a dipeptide reacting
with a third amino acid to form a tripeptide and releasing another water molecule,
and so on. Sometimes hundreds or thousands of amino acids link up, with a corresponding
number of water molecules released. For n amino acids in a chain, n-1 water molecules
are released.
This means that condensation reactions, like the synthesis of peptides from amino
acids, are inhibited by excess water, and the reverse reaction is favoured.
Professor A.E. Wilder-Smith, commenting on this fact, writes:
‘The consequence of this well-known fact of organic chemistry is important:
concentrations of amino acids will combine only in minute amounts, if they combine
at all in a primeval ocean providing excess water, to form polypeptides. Any amounts
of polypeptide which might be formed will be broken down into their initial components
(amino acids) by the excess water. The ocean is thus practically the last place
on this or any other planet where the proteins of life could be formed spontaneously
from amino acids. Yet nearly all textbooks of biology teach this nonsense
to support evolutionary theory and spontaneous biogenics. It requires a very great
unfamiliarity with organic chemistry not to take into consideration the above-mentioned
facts when proposing postulates for biogenesis…’13 (Emphasis in the original.) [See also
Origin of life: the polymerization problem.]
In the case of biogenesis, these reversible reactions are all in equilibrium with
one another, since there is no cell machinery to remove products selectively. In
the body, organic reactions such as the synthesis of proteins and the oxidation
of fats occur because of the intervention of specific enzymes (acting as a type
of ‘chemical machinery’)14
acting specifically at each step along the reaction chain. However, enzymes are
proteins, and one cannot claim synthesis for a product if one begins with the product
one is trying to end up with.
The purpose of Huxley’s typewriter argument was to show that, given enough
time, any event is certain to occur. However, for this argument to be analogous
to the idea of the formation of proteins by chance combination of amino acid molecules,
Huxley’s typewriters needed to be reversible!
With an ordinary typewriter, any words typed by an ape would stay on the paper and
would not get modified into more meaningful combinations, nor would they decompose
into their constituent letters. This means that each word is out of equilibrium
with its precursors and has no ‘postcursors’.
However, with a reversible typewriter, when the key ‘A’ (for example)
was depressed, the letter ‘A’ would be printed on the paper; but when
the same key was released, the printed letter ‘A’ would arise from the
paper without leaving a trace, so that the typewriter would type out just as quickly
and effectively as it typed in. All of which means that Huxley’s eternal apes
would have typed as much or as little after one second as after a billion years.
Furthermore, it would not matter how many billion apes were typing (or molecules
of matter were combining), or how many (billion) times per second this might have
been happening. The result at any time would always be zero, whether it be apes
typing reversible typewriters or amino acids combining in reversible reactions.
Another way of saying this is that ‘increased time spans in biological systems
will merely increase the probability of equilibrium being set up, and not the probability
of improbable reaction products being formed’.15,16
Conclusion
The concept of ‘somewhere, sometime’ does not apply, because the probability
of forming a stipulated end-product from reversible reactions in equilibrium is
zero.
The theory that chance random combinations of living matter could produce the Bishop
of Oxford, a living cell, or even a single functional protein molecule, whether
in time or in eternity, therefore fails on all counts.
Life is bristling with machinery, codes and programs, which are not an inherent
property of the material substrate (the information for their construction having
been passed on during reproduction). No observation has ever shown such information-bearing
structures arising spontaneously. The obvious inference from science, as well as
the obvious implications of Scripture, is that the original creation of living things
involved the very opposite of chance, namely, the imposition of external intelligence
on to matter by an original Designer or Creator.
Addendum: Did Wilberforce really say it?
Writers dealing with the famous debate between Huxley and Wilberforce often repeat
the story that the Bishop, towards the end of his speech, turned to Huxley and asked
whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent
from an ape? Huxley, in reply, is supposed to have said that he was not ashamed
of having an ape as an ancestor, but he would be ashamed of having as an ancestor
a man who used his abilities in a sphere of science with which he had no real acquaintance
and who used aimless rhetoric in an appeal to religious prejudice.
J.R. Lucas sums up the evidence for and against this story in a long article in
the Historical Journal,17
summarised in Nature.18
He points out that the audience was ‘larger than a full House of Commons’,
which means that, in the noisy and somewhat gladiatorial circumstances of this debate,
not everyone would have correctly heard everything that was said.
Of Wilberforce’s science, as presented in the debate, Lucas says: ‘These
were serious scientific arguments, worthy of a vice-president of the British Association.
Darwin acknowledged their cogency’. He goes on to say,
‘It is doubtful that Wilberforce asked Huxley whether he was descended from
an ape. It makes a good story, but Wilberforce had used the first person plural
in his review, and the use of the first person is borne out by Wilberforce’s
biography and one—admittedly late—account. What Wilberforce may have
asked Huxley in the second person is where he drew the line between human descendants
and ape-like ancestors, if, as was generally admitted, the offspring was of the
same species as the parents.19 Huxley,
however, was ready to answer the question he had not been asked. Three months earlier,
in the April issue of the Westminster Review, he had accused critics of
Darwin of making him out to be no better than an ape himself, and since Wilberforce
was now criticising him for being a Darwinian, he must be calling him an ape too.’
It would seem therefore that Wilberforce did not try to ridicule Huxley, but rather
the reverse was actually what happened. If so, it gives a very different picture
of what really occurred at this famous debate.
Readers’ commentsRisteard M., Ireland:
You say that Bishop Wilberforce published a good review of the “Origin of Species” in the Quarterly Review for July 1860. Has anyone ever republished the book review-on the Internet or elsewhere-or could I find it only in a university library e.g. that of Trinity College Dublin?
God bless your important work. Russell Grigg responds:
Greetings Risteard.
Thank you for your email. Yes we found Wilberforce’s review of Origin and referred to it in “Darwin’s Bulldog, Thomas H. Huxley” in the box “Huxley’s debate with Wilberforce”—i.e, reference # 24. It is also available at Review of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, 1860. Alternatively you can access the original at (last accessed 14 May 2010), which is where we found it.
Happy reading!
Bob A., United States:
The certain probability: an infinite amount of monkeys, with infinite amounts of paper, typewriters and time will produce an infinte amount of drivel.
An occasional combination of letters recognized as a “word” may appear; even more rarely, a (very) short “intelligible clause.” But never a collection that, extracted as a whole, would ever be accepted as cognitive thought-even if the source were unknown.
Jonathan S., United Kingdom
It’s interesting that your correspondent seems blissfully unaware that he is confusing infinity and possibility. Thinking in terms of infinity and probability it becomes clear that the idea of an infinite opportunity does not read over as “all possible outcomes”.
Consider the following: No amount of time will mean that the decimal result of dividing one by three will be anything than a recurring stream of the digit 3 after the decimal point. No one would argue that the rest of the digits from 1 to 9 would appear in that recurring figure!
Maartin Vd W., South Africa
It is again with interest that I read the comments on this article and wondered what argument will next be presented in defending this illogical fantasy. Blind evolution did not have infinity, to their own admission, to produce eyes (and everything else). The time available is /-20 Billion years. This gives us about 6x10^(17) seconds. If the chance to produce a monkey is 1:10^(1000) (which gives it actually a highly probable chance!) then it means that there must occur at least 10^(983) events per second to give evolution a chance! Wow, we won’t see anything evolving, only perfect end results because it would happen so fast that we won’t even get a chance to see the changes taking place-I hope I am not establishing a new philosophy! Thank you very much for all the precious information and encouragement. Jesus is alive and well!
Tim C., United Kingdom
I’m really surprised anyone bothered writing this piece! Even if the monkeys thing was tight how does that even begin to say anything about the probability of cells forming by chance? We can waste an awful lot of typing arguing against rubbish and not enough just declaring and living simple gospel truth!
Jeanne T., Australia
One other thing to consider in the “monkeys on typrewriters” analogy is, what language would the desired text have to be in, or could it consist of words in many different languages? Huxley was merely postulating about the possibility of these monkeys reproducing a text that was already in existence, in a language that was already known.
In the case of DNA, the code or “language” would have to exist before the arrangement of “letters” could have any meaning. Indeed, language has to exist before letters can even be conceived. And no language or code can come into being apart from an intelligent mind to give it meaning in the first place.
Mark J., United States
Further to Jeanne of Australia; Along with the language the typewriter was programmed for it also had to be developed by an intelligence itself. An intelligent (?) person had to round up the monkeys, persuade them to sit for limitless hours and keep typing. Did the the monkeys put in and replace the paper as needed? The further it goes the more ridiculous it gets. Keep up God’s work of pointing out His ways, so far above our human minds.
Wendy A., Australia
Aha! But you said there were SIX monkeys. This brings the expected time down to only 1.6 x 101016 years! |
Related articles
References and Endnotes
- Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, Vol. 2
ed. Francis Darwin (New York: Appleton and co., 1911), pp 117–8.
Return to text.
- Huxley used the term ‘apes’ but modern-day writers
on this theme tend to prefer ‘monkeys’, e.g. David Osselton, ‘Making
a Monkey of Shakespeare’, New Scientist, November 1, 1984, p. 39.
Return to text.
- The formula used here, 1/pr, is not strictly accurate,
but is used for the sake of simplicity in the comparison of time. According to W.
Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Application (3rd
Edition, 1957), Vol. 1, pp. 332–324. ‘Application to
the theory of success runs’, the formula for the mean time u measured
in number of symbols is given by u = 1-pr/qpr or u
- 1-pr/qpr where q = 1-p.
In our case p = 1/50, and the whole Psalm r = 603. But for practical
purposes it hardly differs. Return to text.
- If we take the solar year of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46
seconds, or 31,556,926 seconds (from which the concept of leap year is derived),
the answer would be 9.546 x 101016 years, (using 1/pr
for ease of comparison). Return to text.
- Ambrose, E. The Nature and Origin of the Biological World,
1982, p. 135, (italics added) as quoted in Bird, W.R. The Origin of Species Revisited,
Philosophical Library, New York, 1989, Vol. 1, pp. 302–3.
Return to text.
- Morowitz, Harold J., Energy Flow in Biology, Academic
Press, New York, 1968, P.67. Return to text.
- Hoyle, Fred, ‘The Big Bang in Astronomy’, New Scientist
92(1280):527, 19 Nov 1981. Return to text.
- See Theodosius Dobzhansky, comments on ‘Synthesis of Nucleosides
and Polynucleotides with Metaphosphate Esters’, in The Origins of Prebiological
Systems 299:310 (S. Fox ed. 1965), cited in Bird, The Origin
of Species Revisited, Vol. 1, p. 359. Bird summarises
the case against natural selection working on non-living chemicals on pages 359–362.
For a recent article advancing the evolutionist’s case see ‘Survival
of the fittest molecules’, New Scientist, 3 October, 1992, pp. 37–40.
And not only can natural selection not explain the origin of life, there are other
limitations, as shown in Weasel, a flexible program for investigating
deterministic computer ‘demonstrations’ of evolution.
Return to text.
- I wish to thank Professor A.M. Hasofer, of the school of Mathematics,
University of New South Wales, for his valued advice on this part of the article.
Return to text.
- There is, of course, a vast difference between a test-tube of
protein and a test-tube of living cells. Some of the characteristics of life are:
the ability to get energy and materials from the environment, the ability to self-repair,
and the ability to reproduce. Return to text.
- Experiments like the Miller–Urey synthesis are irrelevant
to the point of this article—they represent the formation of some jumbled
‘alphabet letters’ if you like, not the arrangement of these into codes
and sequences. There is nothing inherently improbable about their formation under
such conditions, as the ‘coding’ to produce them is already there. However,
they lead to a dead end in origin-of-life experiments because the mixture formed
is a tarry goo of all sorts of other molecules as well, which acts against further
synthesis. In addition, a racemic mixture of left-handed and right-handed forms
results, whereas living things use one ‘hand’ exclusively.
Return to text.
- For a full treatment of this aspect see A.E. Wilder-Smith,
The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution (San Diego, CA: Master Books,
1981), Chapter 2, Biogenesis by Chance? pp. 11–16. Return to text.
- Ibid., p. 16. Return to text.
- Cell machinery ensures that products are removed from the reaction
before they can revert to reactants, which results in irreversibility. The ‘primordial
soup’, from which life is alleged to have evolved, would have no such elaborate
machinery, so the reaction would tend towards equilibrium which is away from life.
Return to text.
- Harold F. Blum, Time’s Arrow and Evolution, 2nd
ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), quoted in A.E. Wilder-Smith,
Man’s Origin, Man’s Destiny (Bethany Fellowship Inc., 1975),
p. 65. Return to text.
- It is acknowledged that not all the amino acids positions in a
particular functional protein are crucial—i.e. to continue the analogy, there
is more than one way of correctly writing the 23rd Psalm. However, this
merely reduces the ‘odds against’ from something approaching infinity
to a little less than infinity. For a full discussion of the calculations involved
see the section ‘Criticisms of Probability Calculations’, in Bird, The
Origin of Species Revisited, Vol. 1, pp. 306–308.
Return to text.
- J.R. Lucas, ‘Wilberforce
and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter’, The Historical Journal
22:313–330, 1979. Return to text.
- J.R. Lucas, ‘Wilberforce no ape’, Nature
287:480, 9 October 1980. Return to text.
- I. Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, Vol.
i, p. 185, quoting Vernon Harcourt. Return to text.
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