AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

News & Events: Public Lecture

Chance or Necessity - Modeling Origins of Life

Thursday, 26 Janaury 2006
AAAS Auditorium
1200 New York Avenue, NW
Washington DC

The fundamental nature of processes that led to the emergence of life has been a subject of long-standing debate. One view holds that the origin of life is an event governed by chance, and the result is unpredictable. This view was eloquently expressed by Jacques Monod in his book "Chance and Necessity". The alternative view is that, while the details need not be deterministic in every respect, the overall origin of life was a predictable event. A corollary to this view is that the emergence of life is determined primarily by universal chemistry and biochemistry rather than by subtle details of environmental conditions. The dominant approach is that the origin of life was guided by information stored in nucleic acids (the "RNA World" hypothesis). An alternative hypothesis states that the formation of protocellular metabolism was driven by non-genomic processes. In this lecture the speakers will explore these different paradigms for the emergence of life and discuss their implications for the predictability and universality of life-forming processes.

Coverage

• Read a brief summary

• Keynote presentation by Andrew Pohorille, with introduction by James B. Miller

  Audio and Video

• Responding presentation by Walter Shropshire

  Audio and Video

• Discussion Period

  Audio and Video

Lecturer

• Andrew Pohorille, Ph.D., Exobiology Program, NASA-Ames Research Center

Respondent

• Walter Shropshire, Jr., Ph.D., M.Div, Adjunct Professor of Science & Religion, Wesley Theological Seminary