Evolution and the Origin of Life
What do you know about evolutionary theory? Or, maybe there are two questions here: what do you think you know, and what do you actually know?
In reality, if people are honest about the matter -- and quite irrespective of whether they believe in evolution or they are opposed to it -- most individuals probably would have to acknowledge that they know almost nothing at all about the actual nuts and bolts of the technical issues at the heart of evolutionary theory. Their belief concerning this matter -- whatever the character of that belief may be -- is, for the most part, rooted in two sources: (a) a largely unexamined acceptance of the opinion of others; (b) the extent to which evolutionary theory makes carrying on with the rest of their philosophical or religious perspective either easier or more difficult to continue to do.
In addition, the controversy surrounding evolutionary theory with respect to origin of life issues has been plagued by the fact that many of the advocates for various sides of this issue have been conducting the discussion on the wrong level. More specifically, people have been arguing mostly in terms of the evidence entailed by paleobiology ... that is, the anatomic/fossilized data which has been drawn from zoological and botanical studies. Unfortunately, the origin of life issue cannot be settled, one way or the other with any degree of certitude, when approached in this manner.
On the aforementioned level of discussion, one, at best, can obtain data which is either consistent with, or raises problems in, evolutionary theory as an explanation for the origin of life. However, there is no smoking gun (either for or against) to be found in such material -- just self-serving and heated rhetoric that tends to be cast in the garments of apparent rigor.
Furthermore, contrary to what many people believe, with the exception of a brief allusion to the possibilities that might exist in a 'warm little pond' somewhere ... a pond with just the right set of magical conditions ... Darwin has virtually nothing to say about the origin of life issue. The entire argument in his universally known but largely unread book is not about the origin of life but about the plausibility of a form of argument that alludes to as well as presupposes such a possibility without ever spelling out the mechanism.
The first part of the title of Darwin's historic work is: 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection'. There is a potential problem inherent in this title because the words tend to suggest that a species comes into being by a mechanism known as "natural selection". However, natural selection gives expression to a set of forces that operates after-the-fact of something having originated, and, therefore, at best, natural selection does not so much generate a species as much as natural selection operates on such a species once the latter has originated.
Natural selection acts on what is. It presupposes what is.
Natural selection does not cause what is, but, rather, it is an expression of those aspects of what is that may help determine which features of what is might continue to be. Natural selection introduces nothing new into the evolutionary picture, but, rather, the idea of natural selection only says something about the facets of that picture which might be most consonant with the dynamic of interacting natural forces existing at a given time and in a given location.
Therefore, the cause of that (whether a prebiotic collection of organic molecules or some primitive form of protocell) which natural selection comes to act upon still stands in need of an explanation. One cannot use natural selection as an explanation for that which natural explanation clearly presupposes without becoming entangled in completely circular thinking, and this sort of jaunt around the conceptual barn does not constitute an explanation of any kind.
Another problem with the previously noted title of Darwin's book is that it gives the impression that something is being selected ... as a person might make a selection among an array of choices. In truth, nothing is being selected since what exists in the way of a set of organic chemicals, or a set of protocells, or a set of species is either compatible (across a range of being more, or less, compatible) with the existing conditions of nature, or such chemicals, protocells, or species are not compatible. If random, such natural events do not select or choose.
What is compatible with the prevailing forces and conditions survives. What is not so compatible tends not to survive. Nothing has been selected.
Another key idea in Darwinian Theory is the notion of 'the accumulation of small variations'. The idea of the accumulation of small variations does not really account for either the origin of life, in general, or for the origin of different, particular biological blueprints, so to speak, on which the notion of species difference is based. Variation presupposes that which is capable of such variation. Consequently what needs to be explained is the origin of the capacity for variation.
Genetics is not the science which provides an account of the story of the origin of that capacity. Rather, genetics is merely a science which delineates how such a capacity operates once it has arisen.
Neither the ideas of natural selection nor variation help explain the origin of life. Only with the advent of modern molecular and cellular biology have we finally come into contact with the sort of information that allows one to make insightful judgments about the plausibility of evolutionary theory as an adequate account for the origins of life on Earth. When one integrates the disciplines of molecular and cellular biology with data derived from geology, hydrology, meteorology, and cosmology -- along with what has been learned about organic and inorganic chemistry -- then, one is in a position to work toward an informed understanding concerning the questions which surround and permeate the possibility of whether the modern neo-Darwinian theory of evolution offers an acceptable paradigm with which to approach origin of life issues.
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Interrogative Imperative Institute, Brewer, Maine 04412
