Biogenesis: Encyclopedia - Biogenesis

Biogenesis

Biogenesis has two meanings. On one hand it is the process of lifeforms producing other lifeforms, e.g. a spider lays eggs, which form into spiders. A second meaning was given by the French Jesuit priest, scientist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to mean the origin of life itself.

The term is also used for the assertion that life can only be passed on by living things, in contrast to abiogenesis, which holds that life can arise from non-life under suitable circumstances. Although these circumstances still remain unknown.

Until the 19th century, it was commonly believed that life frequently arose from non-life under certain circumstances, a process known as spontaneous generation. This belief was due to the common observation that maggots or mould appeared to arise spontaneously when organic matter was left exposed. It was later discovered that under all these circumstances commonly observed, life only arises from life.

Biogenesis - Law of biogenesis

Pasteur's (and others) empirical results were summarized in the phrase, Omne vivum ex vivo, Latin for "all life [is] from life", also known as the "law of biogenesis". They showed that life does not currently spontaneously arise in its present forms from non-life in nature. They did not show that life cannot arise once, and then evolve. [1]

The "law of biogenesis" is not to be confused with Ernst Haeckel's Biogenetic Law. [2] [3]

No life has ever been observed to arise from non-living matter.

Biogenesis - Controversy

Critics of the "law of biogenesis" argue that:

• it is solely rooted in empiricism;
• it poses an instance of the fallacy of accident;
• "Abiogenesis is not possible because it has not been observed." is an argument from ignorance;
• the law is tantamount to the belief in a "life spirit", a non-measurable essence that is transferred from life to life in the process of biogenesis.

Proponents counter that:

• all natural laws are rooted in empiricism, and that explanations for natural phenomena not grounded in empiricism are necessarily tentative and/or philosophical;
• it is not a fallacy of accident, because no exception to the generalization has ever been observed;
• a natural law should be considered universal until an example to the contrary is found;
• the law has no relation to any belief in the "life spirit" — it is simply an empirical fact.

Biogenesis - Human attempts to create life

Charles Darwin in a letter to J.D. Hooker of February 1st 1871, made the suggestion that life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed." Thus, it is the presence of life itself which prevents "spontaneous generation" from occurring on Earth today.

A number of efforts have been made to bring life from non-life, but none has yet succeeded. J. B. Burke attempted to produce small living cells from inorganic matter by means of radium were unsuccessful; the radiobes produced were merely bursting gas bubbles of microscopic size. Pflüger produced cyanic acid, which he compared to half-living molecules, but it was merely a dead chemical compound. The Russian Scientist Alexander I Oparin suggested that we need to understand that the conditions on Earth at the time of the origin of life must have been very different than they are today. The Miller-Urey experiment confirmed Oparin's hypothesis by producing some of the organic components of life, from an atmosphere of methane, ammonia and water vapour.

In 2002, scientists succeeded in constructing an artificial and "functioning" (able to infect and kill mice) Polio virus. Other viruses have since been synthesized. These experiments do not qualify as examples of abiogenesis, though, since viruses, are considered to fail to meet the standard biological criteria for life many do not consider them to be lifeforms. The organic makeup of life and the makeup viruses are not the same. Viruses feed of life and rarely live outside it's host for long.

Still, proponents of the idea of abiogenesis cite these results in support of their position, stating that both "non-living" viruses and "living" bacteria are solely "molecular machines" of different complexity. Many of them expect scientists to be able to synthesize the latter when the necessary technology has advanced to a sufficient level, thus proving the possibility of abiogenesis.

Critics of Abiogenesis point out that (thusfar) life cannot be created without outside intelligence forcing environmental conditions necessary for life, so that "all by itself" seems extremely unlikely.

Biogenesis - Law of Biogenesis and Creationism

The narrower meaning of the term Biogenesis is the basis of Creation biology, which holds that since life cannot arise spontaneously from non-life, life must, of necessity, have been created by a "supernatural" being, typically the Christian God.

Supporters of the theory of evolution argue that creationists misuse the law of biogenesis to support their arguments. For example:

They also say that creationists' use of the law as an argument against theories of common descent is an example of the fallacy of false dilemma, since it is imaginable that a creator god created the LUCA or one of its ancestors, from which point on evolution occurred in a guided or unguided fashion.

Creationists respond that abiogenesis is not a form of creationism, because it holds that life arises spontaneously, while creationism holds that life was deliberately created. Further, since the development of "primitive life" from "increasingly complex molecules" has never been observed and there remains no comprehensive scientific justification for believing it has ever occurred. Finally, they argue that once it has been conceded (as is conceded by theistic evolution) that the original cell was created by a divine being, there is no reason to believe he could not have created life in a variety of forms, although there is also no reason to believe he would bother. [5]

It should be noted anything divine cannot be "proven" since it cannot be tested nor queried. Whereas possible avenues of abiogenesis can be scientifically explained and tested.

See also

• Origin of life
• Omne vivum ex ovo

Categories: Origin of life | Creationism

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biogenesis", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki