Abiogenesis and the Ency Brit -- Part 1

Kevin L. O'Brien (klob@lamar.colostate.edu)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 08:33:28 -0700

Well, the Calvin listserv computer did it again. Doesn't anyone maintain that critter?

This reply is posted for the benefit of the group, not in response to Joseph. Should Joseph respond only with threats and innuendo, he shall be ignored.

"No matter how abiogenesis and spontaneous generation are lexicographically manipulated, they share the meaning of life arising from nonliving matter."

Simplistically, yes. But not phenomenologically. Spontaneous generation never tried to mechanistically explain how living matter could be derived from nonliving matter. Also, spontaneous generation assumed that whole, modern, adult, functional organisms arose from the material of their immediate environment. Spontaneous generation was also infected with the concept of vitalism, the view that life was somehow special, energetic and powerful, a kind of all-prevailing force that permeated the biosphere and could reorganize inanimate matter into animate life.

Abiogenesis, on the other hand, has many explanations for how living matter could be derived from nonliving matter, all based on known physiochemical mechanisms and nearly all testable. Abiogenesis assumes that the first "living" matter would be the molecules of life, that these molecules would then be organized into primitive molecules, that would then be organized into primitive cells. Meanwhile, natural selection and mutation -- good old fashioned Darwinian mechanisms -- would evolve these primitive molecules and cells into better, more efficient molecules and cells. Abiogenesis also rejects vitalism in favor of known mechanistic physiochemical processes that are not governed by some overall guiding organizing force, but are governed by the basic laws of the universe.

The important difference is that spontaneous generation was one last attempt to preserve the mystical in the face of scientific advancement, whereas abiogenesis is pure science.

"There is no importance in whether the event was spontaneous, like the Egyptian serpent, or aided, like Prometheus' clay man."

But there is if the process is gradual and governed by known