—Charles Darwin, on conditions for the
origin of life
Some people thought it was impossible;
other people thought it might have happened.
Miller and Urey actually did the experiment
to test the “primordial soup” theory
of Alexander Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane.
Miller and Urey cycled a mixture of gases
through an apparatus that delivered electrical
sparks.
This produced a variety of amino acids,
building blocks of proteins. Living organisms
might have evolved from such molecules.
Biogenesis, etcetera
biogenesis
abiogenesis
archebiosis
*
Henry Charlton Bastian believed he witnessed
spontaneous generation of living organisms under
his microscope
and proposed the term biogenesis
for the generation of living organisms from
unliving matter.
Thomas Henry Huxley, independently
used biogenesis for generation from
living things
and abiogenesis for generation from
unliving matter.
Subsequently, Bastian renounced the term biogenesis
and found that he could not accept the term abiogenesis
so introduced the term archebiosis
for the generation of living organisms from
unliving matter.
Turtles
If everything living came from other living
things
what did the first living thing come from?
What do we mean by “life,”
and what do we mean by “first”?
If the universe and all space
were originally compressed into a single point,
then where did that point come from,
and what kind of thing surrounded it?
Asked, if the world were on the back of a giant
turtle,
what the giant turtle was standing on,
the foolish might have argued “It’s no use;
there are turtles all the way down.”
Science gave up on the idea of spontaneous generation after Louis
Pasteur did the experiment using a bottle with a swan-neck duct.
As the idea of evolution began to be accepted, they wondered how
life started. Many continued to rely on religious myths. Many
believed that life on earth was planted from an asteroid, comet,
or alien spacecraft (the panspermia hypothesis).
If life didn’t start from unliving matter, then how did
whatever started it start?
Science gave up on the idea of spontaneous generation after Louis Pasteur did the experiment using a bottle with a swan-neck duct. As the idea of evolution began to be accepted, they wondered how life started. Many continued to rely on religious myths. Many believed that life on earth was planted from an asteroid, comet, or alien spacecraft (the panspermia hypothesis). If life didn’t start from unliving matter, then how did whatever started it start?
See also in The book of science:
Readings on wikipedia: