Chapter I: The Origin of Life

In dealing with fundamental questions like the origin of life, how prone our natural philosophers are to assume the existence of that which they set out to prove. Thus Pflügler assumes _living_ protein in the shape of a cyanogen radical, and assumes that this radical possesses a large amount of internal energy, and thus “introduces into the _living_ matter energetic internal motion.” As cyanogen and its compounds arise only in incandescent heat, he concludes that life is derived from fire, that its germ was in the earth when it was still an incandescent ball.

“As soon as oxides can be there,” says Moore, “oxides appear.” “When temperature admits of carbonates, then carbonates are forthwith formed.” But are oxides and carbonates mere fortuitous compounds--just chance hits? Moore helps himself out by formulating what he calls the “Law of Complexity,” a law that holds throughout all space. But is the law, again, fortuitous? Is it not rather organized intelligence? “Atoms, molecules, colloids, and living organisms arise as a result of the operation of this law.” Allen says, “Life arose at the period when the physical conditions of the earth came to be nearly what they are at present.” Of course. But is not this begging the question? We do not know life apart from these conditions; hence we assume that the conditions beget the life.

What is life anyhow? May we not say that it is a new motion in matter? It does not introduce a new chemistry, or a new physics, but it uses these to new ends. New and unstable compounds arise. Solar energy, says Allen, acting on various carbon and nitrogen compounds, would set up various anabolic and catabolic reactions which resulted in life--life of a very humble and rudimentary form, but life.

Troland gets life from the enzymes, but how does he get his enzymes? He assumes that at some moment in the earth’s history a small amount of a certain autocatalytic enzyme--a self-created enzyme--suddenly appeared at a definite time and place within the yet warm ocean waters which contained in solution various substances reacting very slowly to produce an oily liquid immiscible with water. Troland postulates the auto- or self-catalytic character of the initial enzyme, which is virtually postulating the life-impulse itself.

Osborn, in his work on the “Origin and Evolution of Life,” also virtually starts by assuming that which he sets out to prove. He suggests that the initial step in the origin of life was the coördinating and bringing together of the then primordial elements of water, nitrates, and carbon dioxide, “which so far as we know had never been in combined action before.” Was their coming together a blind, fortuitous affair? Osborn assumes that these elements were gradually bound by a _new_ form of mutual attraction “out of which arose a new form of unity in the cosmos, an organic unity or organism. It was an application of energy new to the cosmos. In fact it was life.” “When the earth had in the course of its physical evolution become adapted as the abode of life, living substances came into being.” By their own independent action, or by what?

In trying to account for happenings on the earth’s surface, we follow the chain of cause and effect. But when we try to explain origins, we are dealing with a chain which has only one end.

Picted, a Swiss scientist, concluded that because all chemical action of the kind which goes on in living things is annihilated at one hundred degrees below zero Centigrade, therefore chemical action and life are one. But chemical action is as old as the earth. Is life as old?