Origin of Life

Cypress said:
I get it. These three choices were just endpoints. There are gradations between them.

I actually want to choose option 2.5, so to speak. Something in between life being ubiquitous, and life being infinitesimally rare.
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2.5 would work for me, too, it's not so cut and dried as the others.
 
Cypress said:
"Scientists have called for a "mission to Earth" to hunt for evidence of a second genesis that gave rise to life, but not as we know it."...."must be open to the possibility that there's more than one tree of life," Davies said.

It is still just an educated guess, but this kind of creative thinking and open mindedness is the trademark of good science.

At this time, available evidence indicates that life, curiously, evolved only once on earth. But a search for evidence of multiple evolutionary events is something we should do. Because I am not the only one who thinks it is a little weird that life only evolved once on earth in four billion years, especially if our expectation is that life is common, resilent, and ubiquitous in the universe.
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To be fair, we know next to nothing about abiogenesis. It's a mystery as of right now.
 
AProudLefty said:
To be fair, we know next to nothing about abiogenesis. It's a mystery as of right now.
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It might not even be a purely scientific question, because it might not be testable or falsifiable.

It is the type of question which might straddle the boundary between science and metaphysics.
 
Cypress said:
It might not even be a purely scientific question, because it might not be testable or falsifiable.

It is the type of question which might straddle the boundary between science and metaphysics.
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That reminds me of Plato's theory of forms.

Ancient Greece sure did have a lot of good theories. It isn't a coincidence that they theorized about the existence of atoms.
 
AProudLefty said:
That reminds me of Plato's theory of forms.

Ancient Greece sure did have a lot of good theories. It isn't a coincidence that they theorized about the existence of atoms.
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Indeed. Two of my favorite intellectual achievements of ancient Greece: Anaximander articulated a theory of evolution, and Democritus came up with atomic theory.

It is remarkable it took two thousand years for European science to circle back and reacquire a theory of evolution and an atomic theory.
 
Cypress said:
Two of my favorite intellectual achievements of ancient Greece: Anaximander articulated a theory of evolution, and Democritus came up with atomic theory.

It is remarkable it took two thousand years for European science to circle back and reacquire a theory of evolution and an atomic theory.
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Yes it's so remarkable that it's another mystery itself. I attribute it to the Dark Ages. I've had a discussion with someone about it. He said it was based on necessity.
I disagreed with him naturally.
 
AProudLefty said:
Yes it's so remarkable that it's another mystery itself. I attribute it to the Dark Ages. I've had a discussion with someone about it. He said it was based on necessity.
I disagreed with him naturally.
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Part of it is that Greek thought was lost to western Europe for almost a thousand years.

But part of it is probably that even in the Greek world, the atomic theory of Democritus did not recieve widespread acceptance. Aristotle throught the theory of atomism was preposterous, and to the minds of medieval western Europeans and the Islamic scholars of Andalusia, Aristotle's authority was unimpeachable.
 
Everyone keeps talking about THE universe.

What if there is more than one?

What there are an infinite number if them?
 
The problem I have with it is there have always been mavericks. Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci being two perfect examples.
 
Nomad said:
Everyone keeps talking about THE universe.

What if there is more than one?

What there are an infinite number if them?
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I love the metaphysical implications of modern physics.

If I recall correctly, the multiverse was theorized as a way to get out of the implication of quantum mechanics that reality is probabilistic, not deterministic.

String theory implies universes with 11 dimensions. Holy smoke!

Let's face it, modern physics, cosmology, abiogenesis are just freaky topics which provide fertile ground for dummies like us to engage in arm waving.
 
Cypress said:
I love the metaphysical implications of modern physics.

If I recall correctly, the multiverse was theorized as a way to get out of the implication of quantum mechanics that reality is probabilistic, not deterministic.

String theory implies universes with 11 dimensions. Holy smoke!

Let's face it, modern physics, cosmology, abiogenesis are just freaky topics which provide fertile ground for dummies like us to engage in arm waving.
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Odd you think of yourself as a dummy.
 
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