The Origin of Life

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PERSPECTIVES IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Volume III · Number 2 · Winter i960 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE HANS GAFFRON, Ph.D.* I. On the Propriety ofAsking the Question Every one of us entertains some kind of belief as to the origin of life. This belief is quite likely made up in varying degrees from three major attitudes which can be easily discerned among our colleagues. The natural philosopher, being aware ofthe awe-inspiring cosmological discoveries and the triumph of the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution, simply cannot help being sure that life evolved naturally from the nonliving , but since he has still a difficult time to reach an understanding as to the nature of matter, he does not expect a perfectly logical and demonstrable solution to the problem of life for many a year, if ever. The humanist, filled with much traditional and little modern scientific knowledge, is indignant that a problem so transcendently profound should be regarded as belonging to the realm ofthe natural sciences and subject to judgments arrived at by laboratory manipulations. The experimenter, finally, with happy insouciance expects his current results to produce the key which will unlock the door to the eternal mystery—ifnot tomorrow, certainly the day after. Two years ago a conference was held in Moscow on the "origin oflife." With its long list ofdistinguished participants, the published proceedings should amount to a catalog ofmajor ideas, most relevant experi- * Department ofBiochemistry, University of Chicago. The author's work is supported by the FeIs Fund. This paper was prepared for the Darwin Centennial Celebration held at the University ofChicago, November 24-28, 1959. 163 ments, and practically all literature references concerning the subject. The scientist familiar with the modern aspects ofthe question will, therefore , know where to obtain the detailed information he is seeking. Only a few selected examples are discussed in the following pages, for this paper is meant as a report to those who are not so well acquainted with the latest scientific approach to the problem but more aware of its historical and philosophical implications. In other words, I shall try to explain why scientists believe that the problem of biopoesis (a word coined by Pirie, meaning the natural evolution oflife out ofthe inorganic world) belongs in the realm ofscience and might be solvable. How death is possible is a question that frightened mankind into profound thought thousands ofyears earlier than the corresponding question, how life is possible. Religion provided dogmatic answers, and during the Middle Ages one could be burned for not being quite satisfied with them. Only when modern natural science grew into a solid system did it become apparent that the second question poses the true problem. Once answered, the first problem is also solved. To destroy is so much easier than to build up. To maintain order requires continued effort; disorder comes naturally. Or, as we scientists say so learnedly: An increase in entropy is the expected course ofevents. Life is the most peculiar case on the earth of continuous creation of elaborate order out of random distribution of dissimilar constituents. That life is tied up directly or indirectly with the conversion ofsunlight into heat explains only where the bulk ofthe energy to build up and maintain living matter comes from. But any black object efficiently converts daylight into heat—-increases entropy—without in the least creating thereby any order to speak of. There must be a guiding principle which helps to produce living order at the expense ofmore disorder in the inorganic world. And this principle is effective within living matter only and nowhere else. The guiding power vanishes with death. It is a prime experience ofmodern man that only life produces life. Together with the mind-body problem (how consciousness arises in living matter) and the problem ofreason (how the world can be comprehended ), the question "What is Ufe?" is considered one of the primary problems ofexistence. It is a common experience that serious people feel uneasy when a biologist casually mentions that living matter must, of course, have 164 Hans Gajfron · The Origin ofLife Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter i960 originated from inorganic matter and that one day this may be proved experimentally. Such an...
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