Why did life originate?

This entry is based on an article on Physorg.com by Lisa Zurg in 2008 called “Why Life Originated (and why it continues).” Link: http://www.physorg.com/news148050302.html

There are numerous researchers who devote their lives to determining how life evolved in the attempt to discover both the origin of life on Earth but also how life could evolve elsewhere. Much of the public has heard about the primordial soup theory and may have heard of the famous Miller and Urey experiment whereby amino acids where spontaneously created from elemental materials and energy. However, how often do we stop to think not about how life was created but why? Why did life originate and why has it continued to evolve?

We know that based on the theory of Darwinian evolution, we evolve in relation to our ecosystems; that organisms are naturally selected on through the process of reproduction and that over time, those traits that are most advantageous in a population will be increasingly passed down to future generations. We know that evolution is random and chaotic in the sense that there is no defining direction that evolution is heading in. Even if we evolve to become better equipped to live in our habitat, that habitat itself not a static entity.

But, according to Arto Annila of the University of Helsinki and Erkki Annila of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, this is not the most basic understanding of evolution and of life. The guiding principle of the universe, and thus of life as well, is the tendency to reduce energy differences. The process of natural selection is at its most fundamental level, nothing more than the drive to increase entropy and decrease energy differences. It is understood that chemicals will spontaneously mix and that elements can spontaneously organize into molecules. All this is done within the context of thermodynamics. All life is merely an assembly of molecules via chemical reactions. The molecules involved in the origin of life likely “underwent a series of more and more complex reactions to minimize mutual energy differences between matter on Earth and with respect to high-energy radiation from Sun. The process eventually advanced so far that it cumulated into such sophisticated functional structures that could be called living.”

Could be called living…That is an interesting concept in and of itself. Because if the principles that operate within living creatures are the same that operate everywhere else in the universe, what exactly distinguishes living from non-living. Indeed, the Annilas stress that there is no distinction between animate and inanimate; that “processes of life are, in their principles, no different from any other natural processes.” Biologists would argue that the most fundamental component of life, indeed the definition of the beginning of life, was the creation of a self-replicating molecule capable of storing information. But is this only a concept that we have since imposed on this molecule. What in reality separates it from its most basic physical and chemical elements?

What this means for us is a substantial de-significance of what it means to be not just an individual, or a human, or an animal, but to be alive itself. What is life really but the product of the tendency to increase entropy? “Our “purpose,” so to speak, is to redistribute energy on the Earth, which is in between a huge potential energy difference caused by the hot Sun and cold space.” Cells, genetic code, cellular metabolism all originated as ways to increase entropy and decrease energy differences. Thus, “the order and complexity that characterize modern biological systems have no value in and of themselves, but structure and hierarchical organization emerged and developed because they provided paths for increasing energy flows.” Though this makes sense at some fundamental level, what does this mean for things like the human brain. Is the ability to think, to write, to cry merely a way to increase entropy, or is there a distinction between the fundamentality of thermodynamics to the origin or life and to the continued evolution of life now? Or is this something we want to believe only because it gives us comfort to think of ourselves as special, as being in some fundamental way different from a pot of boiling water?

This is getting us closer to the philosophical conundrum of the definition of life, however, this also relates to the search for the origin of life. And thus relates to the biological foundations of life, and indeed the meaning of “biological” foundations in the first place. Because, “’according to thermodynamics, there was no striking moment or no single specific locus for life to originate, but the natural process has been advancing by a long sequence of steps via numerous mechanisms so far reaching a specific meaning – life.’” So how are we supposed to determine a particular moment, compound or reaction that distinguishes animate from inanimate? We can look at the structures and processes that we know occur in life and try to figure out how they came to evolve, but we may never be able to define the point at which life originated. At least, not if life itself is indefinable. There is no definite beginning.

This makes the title of the article I’m describing inconsistent. While the article argues that there can be no single point of origin of life, the title implies that there was. Despite this inconsistency, the article does take an interesting but also disconcerting look at the “origin” of life from a different perspective. Whether this perspective is irrelevant to the study of astrobiology is unanswered.
It is a fundamental principle of science to conceptualize nature and to define things in an arbitrary but significant way, indeed that is a tendency of humanity itself, and thus to conceptualize ‘life’ may not only be inevitable but also essential. I would argue that this tendency is pivotal to the ability to do science and learn about the world. So perhaps it is not so important to get stuck on the fact that life is indefinable, but it is important, I would argue, to understand the point of this article and the fundamentals of the argument that life is just a human concept. Indeed, this way of thinking about life may be important for astrobiology as we begin to get closer to discovering the origin of life, only to discover that there is no concrete origin. It also may help us to think outside the box in terms of what we consider to be possibilities of life on other planets; taking a step back to look at life as the product of thermodynamics (another concept and label we impress on nature though obviously based on true phenomena) may help us search for life elsewhere.

It is also important to note that this is not a new perspective on life; Buddhists, Taoists and many philosophers in history have conveyed the understanding that everything is made out of atoms and that at the most basic level, everything is of the same and life is only a human construction.

As the Anillas say, “To ask how life started would be the same as to ask when and where did the first wind blow that quivered the surface of a warm pond.”