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Feb 21-23, 2003
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After years of publicly sidestepping the issue of the origin of life,
Huxley delivered a famous presidential address, entitled “Biogenesis
and Abiogensis,” in 1870 to the British Association for the Advancement
of Science (BAAS). Acknowledging that Darwinian science implied a naturalistic
origin of life, Huxley posited that living organisms had arisen on the
primitive Earth in a series of stages from nonliving matter. This concept
he labeled “abiogenesis,” to distinguish it from the principle
of spontaneous generation championed by Bastian.
Judging by his private correspondence, Darwin seems largely to have concurred
with Huxley’s version of a naturalistic origin of life. He clearly
followed with great interest the debate between Bastian and Huxley (which
nearly destroyed Bastian’s career). But Darwin never aired his thoughts
on the subject in public.
A rebuttal of Huxley’s concept of abiogenesis appeared the following
year in a presidential address to BAAS by William Thomson (later Lord
Kelvin). A committed anti-Darwinist and deeply religious man, Thomson
offered a theory of “panspermia,” the meteoric import of life
to Earth. Darwinians privately derided Thomson’s theory as a desperate
shield thrown up against the stinging implications of abiogenesis. Huxley
thought that panspermia didn’t solve the origin-of-life problem
at all, but only pushed it off to another planet.
Strick suggested that discussions of the origin of life are “theologically
charged” to this day. He cited the work of the science historian
and philosopher Iris Fry, who in The Emergence of Life on Earth (Rutgers
University Press, 2002) traced the wide variations in Christian theology
regarding the origin of life over the centuries. Even by 1997 the Pope
had not fully accepted a materialistic theory of evolution, Strick noted.
But apart from religious implications of the discussion, Strick emphasized,
an examination of the broader historical context offers other important
information about trends in how scientists in the past 150 years have
defined life and thought about its origin.
Near the beginning of his 1899 article, “What is Life?” the
British physician and professor of physiology F.J. Allen wrote, “Life
is too complex to be described in a concise aphorism.” But, Strick
said, “…notwithstanding his opening caveat, Allen soon arrives
at his own pet, too-concise formulation, which he calls a law: that ‘every
vital action involves the passage of oxygen either to or from nitrogen.’…Allen’s
attempt to hold on to some single sine qua non of life represents the
deep grip of a late nineteenth century gestalt that we need to look at
more closely.”
From 1860 until about 1910, Strick said, scientists believed that their
charge of “explaining life” required them to address every
aspect of the complex problem of the nature and origin of life. Theories
abounded as to the simplest living unit: Huxley proposed “protoplasm,”
Darwin suggested “gemmules” of pangenesis, Nägeli offered
“micelles,” and Verworn, “biogen.” Allen’s
focus on nitrogen as the defining feature of life fits within this tendency,
Strick noted. Only after scientists began to perceive the complexity of
the problem and tease apart its strands, did the focus of origin-of-life
investigations change.
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