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The Origin of Life
The Origin of Life2018 •
The current book is not about trying to prove the truth of this or that scientific or religious account about the origins of either human beings, in particular, or life, in general. ‘The Origin of Life' is about the problems surrounding the process of interpreting empirical evidence and subjecting that data to various methods of rigorous critical reflection.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Planetary Science
Origins of Life: Questions and Debates2017 •
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Planetary Science. Please check back later for the full article.Stanley Miller demonstrated, in 1953, that it was possible to form amino acids from methane, thus generating the ambitious hope that chemists would be able to shed light on the origins of life by recreating a simple life form in a test tube. However, it must be acknowledged that the dream has not yet been accomplished, despite the great volume of effort and innovation made by the scientific community.At minimum, primitive life can be defined as an open chemical system, fed with matter and energy, capable of self-reproduction—that is, making more of itself by itself—and also capable of evolving. The concept of evolution implies that the chemical system transfers its information fairly faithfully, but makes a few random errors. By chance, some parts of the self-assembly are then capable of generating a copy. Sometimes, a minor error in the p...
This paper clarifies why it is not possible to understand or explain life and mind with only the knowledge of physics and chemistry. Both the process of emergence and hierarchic structural organization are required in addition to physics and chemistry for there to be life and mind.
In spite of the spectacular developments in our understanding of the molecular basis that underlies biological phenomena, we still lack a generally agreed-upon definition of life, but this is not for want of trying. Life is an empirical concept; and, as suggested by the many unsuccessful efforts to define it, this task is likely to remain, at best, a work in progress. Although phenomenological characterizations of life are feasible, a precise definition of life remains an elusive intellectual endeavor. This is not surprising: as Nietszche once wrote, there are concepts that can be defined, whereas others only have a history. The purpose of this essay is to discuss some of the manifold (and often unsatisfactory) definitions of life that have been attempted from different intellectual and scientific perspectives and reflect, at least in part, the key role that historical frameworks play. Although some efforts have been more fruitful, the lack of an all-embracing, generally agreed-upon definition of life sometimes gives the impression that what is meant by life's origin is defined in somewhat imprecise terms and that several entirely different questions are often confused. The many attempts made to reduce the nature of living systems to a single living compound imply that life can be so well defined that the exact point at which it started can be established with the sudden appearance of the first replicating molecule. On the other hand, if the emergence of life is seen as the stepwise (but not necessarily slow) evolutionary transition between the non-living and the living, then it may be meaningless to draw a strict line between them.
History and philosophy of the life sciences
The origin of life: scientific, historical and philosophical perspective2012 •
Hts Teologiese Studies-theological Studies
The building blocks and origins of life2020 •
The building blocks and origins of life have fascinated scientists since the earliest of times. What is required for life to work in terms of building blocks? An outline of the building blocks that have to be present in living systems to allow the processes that are required for life is given. These building blocks have to be organised in a specific way to allow living processes to be functional, which are summarised in what is referred to as the seven pillars of life. In essence, these are the fundamental characteristics of all living systems. Evidences of when and how living systems developed on the Earth shortly after the Earth established itself as a planet are discussed. This comes from the growing body of geological evidence of the age of rocks and rock formations in different places on the Earth. This review is concluded with the latest evidence of where on Earth living systems may have started. A large amount of uncertainty exists about these processes, but more and more con...
The earth is believed to have started existing about four and a half billion years ago. That must have been very long. Upon this belief, no one is certainly sure about how and when exactly it began as there is none that witnessed it. However, to answer this question of origin of life, different scientists have come up with their own theories among which three are considered the main ones. The first, also considered to be the oldest is that which suggests that there is a supernatural being or force behind the existence of life on earth. This theory is mostly used by different religions and cultures and has for many years been passed from one generation to the other. The second and common theory suggests that life began from another world and then later on it was transferred to the earth as in the case of meteors or comets. The third main theory which is the commonly used one in the scientific world is that the earth began about 3.5 billion years ago due to a complex series of chemical reactions involving from carbon element. From the scientific theory, three major hypotheses have been formulated, which include the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis, Miller-Urey hypothesis and RNA world hypothesis. While some scientists support the RNA world hypothesis, others have taken a stand on the metabolism first hypothesis (Choi, 2016). This paper discusses at length these hypotheses and how the first biological molecules and cells arise.
Contemporary theories of the origin of life divide along the same conceptual lines as contemporary accounts of the nature of life, with small molecule theories (e.g., Wächtershäuser's iron pyrite world) corresponding to metabolic theories/definitions of life and genes-first theories (currently dominated by the RNA world) corresponding to evolutionary (e.g., chemical Darwinian) theo-ries/definitions of life. I discuss some difficulties faced by this general approach: First, it isn't at all obvious that a successful theory of the origin of life will divide along the same lines as a theory of the nature of life. Second, in both cases there is the worry that signs of life are being mistakenly treated as essential to life. Third, most theories of the origin of life tend to minimize or even side step the transition from nonliving ensembles of molecules to the first proto-organisms. I close with a suggestion for dealing with some of these difficult problems.
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