Everyone does eventually, and when they do, the International Society for the Study of Origins of Life will be there for them – with 214 pages of abstracts (PDF) from their 2008 symposium.
It’s a fascinating read for those interested in current abiogenesis hypotheses and models, but be warned: you’ll need to search for keywords of interest (like “ribozyme” or “hydrothermal”) if you want to move around the document quickly, there’s just too much in there!
Hat-tip to Cassandra’s Tears for forcing me to happily dump this monster into my papers collection.
Jack :"…there’s just too much in there"
Will: Yeah, another WIll (Shakspeare) wrote "Much Ado About Nothing."
Scientists were keen on studying phlogiston in the 17th century and didn't give up their obsession for finding this will-o-the-wisp until a century later. And even after Boyle's experiments disproved it, scientists still clung to the discredited concpet long afterwards. This seems to be a recurring problem in "science."
As the song goes:
"When will they ever learn; when will they ev-v-v-er learn?"
WIll
You seem to be suggesting that abiogenesis has already been falsified and that there is already a scientific alternative to it. Shame you didn’t present your paper. Maybe next year?
Does another paper really have to be written on this subject?
Everyone sees the Sun rise in the East and set in the West. NO one has ever seen or reported that the Sun rises in the West. So if some people were to come forward and say, "We think the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East, and we are going to try to prove it," most people would think they were looney.
Well, everyone sees, everyday without fail that life comes from life. No one has ever seen or reported that life come from matter. Of course there are those who claim that rats come from dirty rags, scorpions from rice, and maggots from decaying meat. A great scientist by the name of Pasteur put that misconception, called abiogenesis to rest.
Is it really necessary to write a paper proving the Sun rises in the East? Is it really necssary to write a paper proving that life comes from life and not from matter?
Scientists are generally philosophical barbarians. Immauel Kant very nicely explained in his "Critique of Judgement" that organisms belong to a special category of Nature because they possess what he called "natural purpose" and therefore cannot be built up from independent parts like a mechanical object, which may have an artifical or manmade purpose. Besides possessing nature purpose organisms are also cause and effect of themselves. That is, the consituents of an organism produce and maintain the organism, as much as the organism produces and maintains its constituents.
Ignoring this simple fact, which Kant recognized even in the 18th century, Watson presented his Central Dogma that DNA produced proteins, when it was discovered by modern research that epigenetic cellular processes are actually essential in maintaining and producing DNA. Thus Kant was vindicated, and Watson humiliated.
The attempt to create life from molecules is like trying to create one of Shakespear's literary masterpieces from simply the 26 letters of the alphabet, the five punctuation marks and the laws/rules of grammar. Certainly his works can be broken down into those parts, but from those parts alone it will be a long night in hell before "Macbeth" can ever be created.
Shakspeare did not start with letters and grammar when he wrote "Macbeth." A creative mind was necessary before the letters and grammar where ever assembled. In the same way, mere organization of matter cannot create life; life creates organization.
Do we really have to have this discussion? Someone once said: "Everyone is mad; once you accept that then the world is not so difficult to understand."
In other words, you are so completely unfamiliar with the literature that you cannot even begin to assail it, but instead of trying to understand it you find it easier to stand on the sidelines making facetious arguments while hoping that everyone who hears you is just as ignorant of the subject as you are.
John: meet Will. He does that. Apparently writers and poets from bygone eras are more relevant to scientific discourse than current peer review or the latest research papers.
Sure, my culturally educated friend. Modern scientists know everything, while the whole of Mankind before them are a bunch of superstitious idiots. This is called chronological conceit – the great bane of modern education.
Sadly those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As it is said, "Only fools learn by experience. The wise learn by hearing from the wise." If your mother says, "Don't touch the stove, it's hot;" the impertinent child will burn his hand off. — It's your choice.
In other words, we are interested in empirical science, not science fiction in the name of science.