How life emerged is a problem that has long been considered by many experts to be imponderable. According to some of us, however, the essential problem of crossing the chasm from inanimate to animate was addressed between 1971-1981, and then had to be rediscovered later for general awareness. The trends and cross-currents in thinking are a fascinating problem in the history and philosophy of science itself. For most viewers, the discovery is actually a rediscovery reminiscent of Gregor Mendel's establishment of the science of genetics, to which protobiogenesis is related. A main part of the reason for this state of intellectual affairs is that the same preconceptions that made the problem appear to be imponderable originally inhibited general acceptance of the answer when it was available.
Looking back we can also say that the delayed rediscovery was exacerbated by the fact that the problem was interdisciplinary. What was needed especially, but not solely, was a sense of thermodynamics and an awareness of an evolutionary, process which had a nonlinear vector. The biologists did not recognize that the chemical aspects of the approach had basically to be synthetic rather than reductionistic while chemists failed to recognize that the sine qua non of life is the CELL.
The problem seemed imponderable to many because it was not, practically could not, be solved by the usual hypothesis-laden approach. Meaningful hypotheses rest on prior knowledge; in this case of the first cell prior knowledge did not exist. What was needed was empirical experimentation with various substances and conditions that might have been relevant to the prebiotic Earth. More than that, the answer came not out of research on the origin of life, but out of a search for the origin of protein plus the fortunate discovery of the reaction of thermal protein to water.
In this volume are presented many explanations for how the preconceptions were overcome so that the discovered could be rediscovered.
Editor Pappelis stands out as one who has worked back and forth from essential insights to an integrative overview. This is the route, along with difficultly arrived at verifiability, to understanding evolution in its various phases. Editor Pappelis has taught himself to meet these requirements at the same time he was identifying them. It is in the context of these philosophies that the problem could be solved.
Sidney W. Fox
Recent Publications
Symposium Article by Sidney W. Fox
Nasa Astrobiology Home Page
Photographs of Protocells
Protocells in Aggregates
History of Biology
Species Concepts--A Compilation by Don Ugent
Don Ugent, Associate Editor
Announcements
1994 ACS Symposium: Origin of Life
History of Biology (Origin of Life)Principles of Geophysics (1997) by N.H. Sleep & K. Fujita
Introduction to Artificial Life (1997) by C. Adami
Molecular Evolution (1997) by Wen-Hsiung Li
Gaia's Body (1998) by Tyler Volk
Darwin Among the Machines (1997) by George Dyson
Book Reviews--Soon to be Posted
Direct questions regarding this page to:
pappelis@plant.siu.edu
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ugent@siu.edu
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