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At Aeon: As a discipline, origin of life is “World’s most theoretically fertile dead end”

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The author, a science writer, keeps orbiting the topic of moving beyond Darwin:

How did life originate? Scientists have been studying the question for decades, and they’ve developed ingenious methods to try to find out. They’ve even enlisted biology’s most powerful theory, Darwinian evolution, in the search. But they still don’t have a complete answer. What they have hit is the world’s most theoretically fertile dead end…

Krakauer shares many of Schrödinger’s views. He thinks that there are many forms of life – that Hamlet, for example, is alive, and that computer viruses and cultural networks might rightly be considered life forms, too. He also thinks that we don’t yet understand the principles of life. I asked Krakauer whether he thought that Schrödinger, in these closing reflections, was a mystic or provocateur or something else. He said that Schrödinger was interested in understanding consciousness and that he wasn’t being mystical with his suggestions. As Krakauer explained: ‘Schrödinger was struggling to find the principles that would unify cultural evolution with organic evolution.’ In short, he, too, was seeking broader principles of life.

When we look at the work in origins of life from the time of Darwin on, we see that the field is astonishingly resilient – perhaps not unlike the emergent life systems that it studies. When it hits a dead end, it spontaneously reconceives of itself. The theoretical frameworks that animate its research have adapted Darwin’s thinking in myriad ways, and now they’re moving beyond Darwin into new theoretical frames.

Natalie Elliot, “Origin story” at Aeon

Her survey of the scene suggests that researchers are moving beyond Darwin in a variety of different directions. Not clear how they will all meet up…

Comments
Miller–Urey experiment The Miller–Urey experiment[1] (or Miller experiment)[2] was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time (1952) to be present on the early Earth and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment at the time supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that putative conditions on the primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler inorganic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted in 1952[3] by Stanley Miller, with assistance from Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the following year.[4][5][6] After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in the genetic code.[7] More recent evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a composition different from the gas used in the Miller experiment, but prebiotic experiments continue to produce racemic mixtures of simple-to-complex compounds under varying conditions.
Seversky
September 9, 2020
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Premieres in 17 hours - James Tour - lecture September 10, 12:00 PM
Scientists are Clueless on the Origin of Life | Lecture @ Andrews University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYHHIBIZF8o
bornagain77
September 9, 2020
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6 Seversky
Darwin’s work was not about the origin of life but neo-Paleyists don’t seem to have grasped that.
Au contraire, Bishop Berkeley. It was the stupid philosophical materialists who tried to convince gullible people that "darwinian evolution" could explain the OOL. How is your conversion from "materialist" to subjective idealist going? "Materialism": garbage philosophy that belongs into the dustbin of History. :)
Hylemorphism provides realistic solutions to the mistakes of materialism. Materialism traps the materialist inside his own brain from which hylemorphism frees him by pointing out that immaterial sense experience is not spatially located. Dr. Dennis Bonnette
Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).Truthfreedom
September 9, 2020
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Darwin's work was not about the origin of life but neo-Paleyists don't seem to have grasped that.Seversky
September 9, 2020
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Martin_r The "darwinian clowns" do not yet understand that "materialism" is dead. A failed worldview that is sinking faster that the Titanic. Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).Truthfreedom
September 9, 2020
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"But they [Darwinians clowns] still don’t have a complete answer." WHAT ???? After 150 years they have got NOTHING... ZERO ... ZERO...ZERO...ZERO.... the origin-of-life-research is a desperate hopeless project ... One may wonder why :)))))))))))martin_r
September 9, 2020
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Life cannot come from no-life anymore than the universe can come into existence from a state of nothingness. Without God, there is no theory that can adequately explain the origin of the universe, nor can any theory explain the origin of life. There are a lot of hypothesis, but hypothesis require no evidence and no requirement to replicate the results. Without witness and replication, no hypothesis can become a theory. It does not matter how elegant the hypothesis may be, since theory has nothing to do with elegance.BobRyan
September 9, 2020
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Polistra
Among the various speculations, “God said let there be life” is indistinguishable from “Random said let there be life.” Random is just an alias for God.
But "Random" does not impose morality. God does. And this is what the fight is all about. The "Random" goddess allows you to occupy her place, because "she" doesn't care at all. God, on the contrary, does not.Truthfreedom
September 9, 2020
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"Theoretically fertile" is the problem. There's no point in generating theories for an intrinsically untestable concept. We can't go back 3 billion years and rerun the experiment several different ways, so all we can do is speculate. By the definition of 'theory', these speculations AREN'T THEORIES. Among the various speculations, "God said let there be life" is indistinguishable from "Random said let there be life." Random is just an alias for God.polistra
September 8, 2020
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