parados wrote:Quote:perhaps two-thirds of scientists publishing in the origin-of life field...
That would not be the evolution field.
Weak response.
I offered several examples of distinguished scientists referring to studies of origin of life as being part of evolution.
Your desire to maintain an arbitrary distinction, in order to save face, is silly.
These scientists see the study of life as a continuum and aren't hampered by hang ups such as yours.
Also, the public schools teach Big Bang/Abiogenesis/Evolution all in one slick package.
Your fear of 'going there' seems to indicate your discomfort with defending the idea that dead chemicals can spring to life of their own accord.
I can understand why. It's a silly idea.
Shapiro postulates a 'metabolism first' proto-cell with no means of replication. ( He hopes that if a rock falls on the proto-cell and splits it, that both segments will get up and walk away unharmed.)
Quote:A system of reproduction must eventually develop. If our network is housed in a lipid membrane, then physical forces may split it, after it has grown enough. (Freeman Dyson has described such a system as a "garbage-bag world" in contrast to the "neat and beautiful scene" of the RNA world.) A system that functions in a compartment within a mineral may overflow into adjacent compartments. Whatever the mechanism may be, this dispersal into separated units protects the system from total extinction by a localized destructive event. Once independent units were established.......
But it's a dead end if there is no means of replication.
Shapiro briefly alludes to the 'compositional approach' that FM mentioned.
Quote:Systems of the type I have described usually have been classified under the heading "metabolism first," which implies that they do not contain a mechanism for heredity. In other words, they contain no obvious molecule or structure that allows the information stored in them (their heredity) to be duplicated and passed on to their descendants. However a collection of small items holds the same information as a list that describes the items. For example, my wife gives me a shopping list for the supermarket; the collection of grocery items that I return with contains the same information as the list. Doron Lancet has given the name "compositional genome" to heredity stored in small molecules, rather than a list such as DNA or RNA.
But it is so far fetched and so speculative that he's unwilling to develop what is essentially the only thing that can salvage his theory. That ought to tell you something.
(If information storage and replication of a living system were really so simple as to be achieved by disconnected small molecules, why DNA?)
However, the 'replicator first' possibility of first life is one he has already discarded as practically impossible. And don't think the good chemist didn't give it the old college try.
So the 'metabolism first' and the 'replicator first' approaches both fall woefully short of credibility.
No wonder you won't go there.
