I don't think there is theory that explains how it happened. Actually it may be impossible to ever verify a theory even when a reasonable one appears because life arose billions of years ago and it will be impossible to construct a history.SatChitAnanda wrote: ↑Fri Oct 29, 2021 3:21 pm Are theories stating that simple organic compounds assembling into more complex coalitions that could grow and reproduce were the very first life on earth incorrect ?
Materialist would see this as inanimate matter becoming animate.
Idealists would see this as the image of a dissociative process in consciousness.
Either way is it true to say that we have a cogent scientific theory of how inanimate matter becomes animate from a materialist POV ?
I didn't think we actually had a proper theory to explain the move from inanimate to animate. How those first reproducing creatures came about.
Because such a theory would also explain the emergence of phenomenal consciousness and there would be no "hard problem of consciousness".
This is why I thought Anil Seth was incorrect when he said the problem of life had been solved and the reason for my post.
Framing this as inanimate vs animate, however, may be creating a conceptual divide that is somewhat artificial.
Certainly there is matter than is completely inanimate - rocks, for example. There is matter that is animate - living organisms. However, there likely are various intermediate forms of matter. Certain forms of matter - complex organic molecules - exhibit life-like characteristics although they are not quite alive or self-sustaining.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_setAn autocatalytic set is a collection of entities, each of which can be created catalytically by other entities within the set, such that as a whole, the set is able to catalyze its own production. In this way the set as a whole is said to be autocatalytic. Autocatalytic sets were originally and most concretely defined in terms of molecular entities, but have more recently been metaphorically extended to the study of systems in sociology and economics.
Autocatalytic sets also have the ability to replicate themselves if they are split apart into two physically separated spaces. Computer models illustrate that split autocatalytic sets will reproduce all of the reactions of the original set in each half, much like cellular mitosis. In effect, using the principles of autocatalysis, a small metabolism can replicate itself with very little high level organization. This property is why autocatalysis is a contender as the foundational mechanism for complex evolution.
Prior to Watson and Crick, biologists considered autocatalytic sets the way metabolism functions in principle, i.e. one protein helps to synthesize another protein and so on. After the discovery of the double helix, the central dogma of molecular biology was formulated, which is that DNA is transcribed to RNA which is translated to protein. The molecular structure of DNA and RNA, as well as the metabolism that maintains their reproduction, are believed to be too complex to have arisen spontaneously in one step from a soup of chemistry.
Several models of the origin of life are based on the notion that life may have arisen through the development of an initial molecular autocatalytic set which evolved over time. Most of these models which have emerged from the studies of complex systems predict that life arose not from a molecule with any particular trait (such as self-replicating RNA) but from an autocatalytic set. The first empirical support came from Lincoln and Joyce, who obtained autocatalytic sets in which "two [RNA] enzymes catalyze each other’s synthesis from a total of four component substrates."[1] Furthermore, an evolutionary process that began with a population of these self-replicators yielded a population dominated by recombinant replicators.
We also have other intermediate forms like viruses and prions that also straddle the living/non-living divide. Some believe life originated as viruses, although others think viruses, which typically require other living organisms to reproduce, followed life as byproducts of it.
A similar incorrect conceptual division exists between consciousness and life. Arthur Reber argues for a basis of consciousness at the single cell level.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ar_SpeciesFrom the CBC [celluar basis of consciousness] perspective, awareness of self and the capacity to detect, interpret, and experience the valenced characteristics of the environment is essential for survival and evolution. Environments are in constant flux. The concentration of the nutrients in the surrounding medium shifts; temperature gradients change; there is an unrelenting assault from viruses, toxins, predators – and, furthermore, these conditions are continuously changing. Without an internal, subjective awareness of these changes, without being able to make decisions about where to move, how to modify gene-expression adaptively for shifts in nutrient levels, how to match the ambient temperature with a memory of what it was in a previous location for adaptive movement, a prokaryote would be a Darwinian dead-end. Moreover, all cellular life, starting with unicellular organisms, is sensitive to anesthetics and, importantly in this respect, plants and several unicellular organisms generate endogenous anesthetics when they are wounded or stressed. In the classic model, a nonsentient agent, one lacking sensations and awareness of its environment should not be responsive to anesthetics.