#5
The boundary between life and nonlife
In this video, Aron Ra asks What is the meaning of the word "life?" (11:17)
So where is the boundary between life and non-life?
One of the biggest discoveries to come from the Miller-Urey experiments
was that the supposed boundary between life and non-life is non-existent ...
the existence of matter is best described as a continuum.
The boundary has been arbitrarily assigned by humans,
creating a false dichotomy for our convenience.
That is one reason why scientists have such a difficult time agreeing
on exactly what constitutes "a living thing."
Stars evolve over time and eventually begin to produce heavier elements.
Matter sometimes evolves in a way that leads to the existence of living things.
The Miller experiments proved that, given the right conditions,
chemical elements can evolve into organic molecules:
the building blocks of what we call "living things."
Invoking Occam's razor, there is simply no necessity
to create an arbitrary boundary that does not exist in nature,
but only in the minds of humans.
An analogy that may be helpful, is human evolution from ape-like mammals.
At no point did an ape-like mammal suddenly become a human.
Only when one looks back over great distances of time
can one see that evolution has occurred.
Therefore the term "abiogenesis" should be understood to be
an arbitrary boundary created for our convenience.
(e.g. to separate the fields of chemistry and biology)
In reality there is simply ... evolution.
(Yes, for those of you who read my book, it's true that I made the same mistake.
When I get around to rewriting it, I will have a lot of editing to do)
To learn more about the origins of life (abiogenesis)
permanent link
(click here first, then copy from address bar above)