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Evolution explains how life evolves, but doesn’t explain the origin of life itself.
by nostromo 5y ago
Evolution explains how life evolves, but doesn’t explain the origin of life itself.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoHm? Evolution explains why life evolves in particular directions. But it has nothing to say about how changes occur; instead, it assumes that changes occur and discusses which changes persist and which don't. From the perspective of "evolution", there is no difference between a strand of RNA mutating into a different strand of RNA and a cluster of vaguely RNA-like chemicals mutating into a strand of RNA. Those are both things that are outside the scope of evolutionary theory.
- kergonath 5y agoEvolution is just a fancy word we put on what we see in living things, but there is nothing magic in DNA or RNA. In an abstract sense, the emergence of some specific complex molecules from a bunch of precursors also is selection of the fittest (most stable, with the lowest energy of formation, etc). These are things at play in the production of amino acids in thermal vents, for example.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoIsn't that what I'm saying?
- kergonath 5y agoIndeed. I intended it more as a complement than an argument against your post.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoEvolution offers the most likely origin of life since it is simpler than all others that I've heard.
- tsol 5y agoYou can explain in detail how self sustaining life can evolve? Even the most die hard science minded people I know concede that's an unknown
- kergonath 5y agoIt’s an unknown in the sense that it hasn’t been verified experimentally and we lack many details, but there are still quite a few things we know. The fact that we are not certain is not an excuse to claim that god did it and it is a failure of science, or that it is unknowable.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 5y agoEvolution does not claim to explain the origin of life - only the, well, evolution of modern day species from primordial ones. The origin of life - that is, how the very first ancestor in the chain came to be from simpler chemical processes - remains an active open area of research. This isn't some faith based, moving the goal posts etc argument - its simple scientific fact: we don't yet know the chemical processes that can start with inorganic compounds and lead to a living cell. We will, some day, but we don't now.
- kergonath 5y agoMost likely, there is no origin of life. As in, there is nothing you can point to that is clearly alive and came from things that are clearly not. Although it is complicated, we know a bit about the chemistry of self-replicating molecules. Things like prions and viruses also show that the boundary between alive and not-alive could be much more blurry than what most people have in mind when discussing such things.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoEver since bjork's "biophilia" album I have considered it a gradient between crystals and biology: they both use atoms in their surrounding to create copies of their structure. Stone does so in a temperature gradient in the environment (atoms crystallizing as they precipitate out of solution) while Life is able to store enough energy in itself to impose structure (trading energy for entropy) on surrounding atoms even when the environment would otherwise dissolve it. The threshold for 'life' is replicating even when conditions are not perfect, that's survival. (on another note, we would never have discovered DNA if not for the same x-ray techniques being used to analyze the symmetries of stone)