Talk:Abiogenesis

Abiogenesis has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: May 7, 2022. (Reviewed version).

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Abiogenesis article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: 90 days

Abiogenesis received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which on February 2009 was archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

view · edit

Frequently asked questions

Some users have noted that many of these questions should be included in the text of Abiogenesis. The reason for their exclusion is discussed below.

The main points of this FAQ (Talk:Abiogenesis#FAQ) can be summarized as:

The occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, and there is ongoing research and competing hypotheses for how abiogenesis could have occurred.
Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy requires that minority views not be given undue emphasis.
It is against Wikipedia policy for views without scientific support, such as all known objections to abiogenesis, to be included in a science article like Abiogenesis.

More detail is given on each of these points, and other common questions and objections, below.

To view the response to a question, click the [show] link to the right of the question.

Q1: Why won't you add criticisms or objections to abiogenesis in the Abiogenesis article?

A1: Our policies on Wikipedia, in particular WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE, require us to provide coverage to views based on their prominence within reliable sources, and we must reflect the opinion of the scientific community as accurately as possible. While there are scientific objections to hypotheses concerning abiogenesis, general objections to the overall concept of abiogenesis are largely found outside of the scientific community, for example, in religious literature and is not necessary to hash out the evolution-vs.-creationism debate, per WP:NECESSARY. There are articles covering some of those religious views, including Objections to evolution, Creationism and Creation myth, but we cannot provide significant weight to religious opinions within a science article, per our policies.

Q2: Why is abiogenesis described as though it's a fact? Isn't abiogenesis just a theory?

A2: A "theory" in science is different than a "theory" in everyday usage. When scientists call something a theory, they are referring to a scientific theory, which is an explanation for a phenomenon based on a significant amount of data. Abiogenesis is a phenomenon scientists are trying to explain by developing scientific theories. While there isn't one unifying theory of abiogenesis, there are several principles and competing hypotheses for how abiogenesis could have occurred, which are detailed in the article. Wikipedia describes the phenomenon of abiogenesis as a fact because the reliable sources from the peer-reviewed scientific literature describe it as a fact.

Compare it with the theory of gravity, by Isaac Newton. It explains how gravity works, and it was superseded when Albert Einstein provided a more complete explanation. That doesn't mean that the factual existence of gravity was ever held in doubt.

Q3: But isn't abiogenesis unproven?

A3: The scientific evidence is consistent with and supports an origin of life out of abiotic conditions. No chemical, biological or physical law has been discovered that would prevent life from emerging. Clearly, abiogenesis happened, because life exists. The other option is that life is a product of a supernatural process, but no evidence to support this has been published in reliable sources. There is plenty of evidence that nearly all the components of a simple cell can and do form naturally, but it has not yet been shown how molecules eventually formed self-replicating protocells and under what environmental conditions.

Q4: Abiogenesis is controversial, so why won't you teach the controversy?

A4: Abiogenesis is not controversial according to the reliable, published sources within the scientific community. Also, see Question 1.

Abiogenesis is, at best, only controversial in social areas like politics and religion. Indeed, numerous respectable scientific societies, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences, have issued statements denouncing creationism and/or ID.^[1] In 1987, only about 0.15% of American Earth and life scientists supported creationism.^[2]

Thus, as a consequence of Wikipedia's policies, it is necessary to treat abiogenesis as mainstream scientific consensus. Besides panspermia, there are no scientifically supported "alternatives" for this view.

Q5: Has abiogenesis ever been observed?

A5: No. How this happened is still conjectural, though no longer purely speculative.

Q6: How could life arise by chance?

A6: Based on the cited peer-reviewed scientific research, it is thought that once a self-replicating gene emerged as a product of natural chemical processes, life started and gradual evolution of complexity was made possible – in contrast to the sudden appearance of complexity that creationists claim to have been necessary at the beginning of life. Life did not happen just because there were huge intervals of time, but because a planet has a certain range of environments where pre-biotic chemistry took place. The actual nature of the first organisms and the exact pathways to the origin of life may be forever lost to science, but scientific research can at least help us understand what is possible.

Past discussions

For further information, see the numerous past discussions on these topics in the archives of Talk:Abiogenesis:

The article is not neutral. It doesn't mention that abiogenesis is controversial.

The article should mention alternative views prominently, such as in a criticism section.

Talk:Abiogenesis/Archive 1#ADD TITLE

Abiogenesis is just a theory, not a fact.

There is scientific evidence against abiogenesis.

Talk:Abiogenesis/Archive 1#ADD TITLE

References

^ See List of scientific societies rejecting intelligent design.
^ As reported in Newsweek magazine, 29 June 1987, Page 23: "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. Earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science..." See also Public beliefs about evolution and creation, Robinson, B. A. 1995. for a discussion on acceptance of evolution.

Evolutionary biology Top‑importance

	Evolutionary biology portal This article is part of WikiProject Evolutionary biology, an attempt at building a useful set of articles on evolutionary biology and its associated subfields such as population genetics, quantitative genetics, molecular evolution, phylogenetics, and evolutionary developmental biology. It is distinct from the WikiProject Tree of Life in that it attempts to cover patterns, process and theory rather than systematics and taxonomy. If you would like to participate, there are some suggestions on this page (see also Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information) or visit WikiProject Evolutionary biologyEvolutionary biologyWikipedia:WikiProject Evolutionary biologyTemplate:WikiProject Evolutionary biologyEvolutionary biology articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Biology High‑importance

	Biology portal Abiogenesis is part of the WikiProject Biology, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to biology on Wikipedia. Leave messages on the WikiProject talk page.BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject BiologyTemplate:WikiProject BiologyBiology articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Palaeontology High‑importance

	Paleontology portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Palaeontology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of palaeontology-related topics and create a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PalaeontologyWikipedia:WikiProject PalaeontologyTemplate:WikiProject PalaeontologyPalaeontology articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Geology High‑importance

	Geology portal Talk:Abiogenesis is part of WikiProject Geology, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use geology resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.GeologyWikipedia:WikiProject GeologyTemplate:WikiProject GeologyGeology articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Environment High‑importance

	Environment portal This environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. Read Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

There have been attempts to recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article. If you've come here in response to such recruitment, please review the relevant Wikipedia policy on recruitment of editors, as well as the neutral point of view policy. Disputes on Wikipedia are resolved by consensus, not by majority vote.

Complaints about the lack of young Earth creationism, intelligent design, or similar points of view are inappropriate content for this talk page. For an overview of how Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy applies to creationism or young Earth-related topics, please see the FAQ at Talk:Evolution.

Text and/or other creative content from Origin of life was copied or moved into Abiogenesis. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

On 1 July 2022, it was proposed that this article be moved to Origin of life. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Over-stated lead sentence

I understand that this page is constantly subject to unscientific vandalism and distortion. However, to refer to "THE natural process by which life ARISES" is an inaccurate summary of scientific knowlege. We do not understand the chemical processes of abiogenesis or whether there can be only one such process, and we have no evidence that it occurred more than once. Perhaps it was inevitable and life exists on many planets, perhaps it was just very good luck and Earth is unique. It overstates our knowledge to say that life naturally arises.

To emphasize the uncertaintly about the chemical processes, I propose:

Abiogenesis is ~~the~~ a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter,

Or to emphasize the historical question of how it happened on Earth:

Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life ~~arises~~ arose from non-living matter,

It's not your or my place to temper what we feel to be an overreaching on the part of the reliable sources. To be frank, your revisions only introduce awkwardness to the prose borne from an apparent lack of engagement with said sources. Remsense ‥ 论 14:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Odds

The article seems to assume the probability of life occurring on a given Earthlike planet is reasonably high, but actually we have no evidence for that. "We don't know the mechanism whereby nonlife turns into life, so we have no way of estimating the odds … It may be one in a trillion trillion..." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-equation-tallies-odds-of-life-beginning1/ Justin the Just (talk) 03:33, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In that article you linked to, all I see under the heading Here is the equation: is a blank grey rectangle. If you can see it, could you please copy it here? HiLo48 (talk) 03:40, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Try here www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961144/ Justin the Just (talk) 03:45, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adapted:

E=BB\times (1/O)\times A\times {\textrm {P}}(\alpha )\times t

where

E is the average number of origin-of-life events for a given planet,
BB is the number of building blocks on planet
O is the mean number of building blocks needed per "organism"
A is availability of building blocks during time t
P(ɑ) is the probability of assembly during time t

Remsense诉 03:53, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. So it's just another equation requiring huge assumptions and guesses. HiLo48 (talk) 04:12, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Remsense诉 04:13, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article assumes no such thing: we have no way of knowing that the probability is low either, given we have a sample size of exactly one. All that we can discuss is what work has been done on the subject. Remsense诉 03:35, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we not say the probability might be low or high? Justin the Just (talk) 03:38, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, because it's a meaningless statement. We reflect what our sources have to say, which tend to be concerned with what we can know, not what we can't. Remsense诉 03:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This bit "The challenge for abiogenesis (origin of life)[7][8][9] researchers is to explain how such a complex and tightly interlinked system could develop by evolutionary steps, as at first sight all its parts are necessary to enable it to function." implies that all the steps are evolutionary and none of them are freakishly unlikely random events. But with a big enough universe such events can't be ruled out. "One origin of life on Earth could be the result of a remarkable and inexplicable pathway to life. " [1] Justin the Just (talk) 10:18, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia articles are supposed to be based on what sources reliable for the subject (in this case, biology sources) say and not on what "cannot be ruled out". --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:36, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the field redefines the challenges they are facing, then that will be reflected in the article. For now, we are covering what they do. Remsense诉 11:40, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found an actual estimate of the odds in what I think is an RS "Our results find betting odds of >3:1 that abiogenesis is indeed a rapid process versus a slow and rare scenario..." [2] Justin the Just (talk) 16:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed edits to lede

I have reverted this good-faith edit to the lede, which was made unilaterally, as there is a comment in the source reading "Please do not change the lead paragraph without first discussing on the talk page." Discussion on the proposed edit and on whether we should move or remove the etymology and whether the lede is overly wikified can take place here. 166.181.85.103 (talk) 00:06, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have reinstated the change since you made no specific objections to it. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 03:25, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would object to the removal of "origin of life" as an WP:ALTNAME and that the etymology information was removed from the article completely instead of moved to a non-lede section. But hopefully others will offer input. 166.181.85.103 (talk) 06:12, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology is mainly dictionary material. This article is about the concept of abiogenesis, not the word. It's not a even a "real" etymology anyway, as this word was coined in the 19th century from Greek roots. Nor is this fact particularly important. If you can find some discussion of it in a source, then feel free to add it back somewhere else, but it sure doesn't belong as clutter in the lead. WP:ALTNAME says "The editor needs to balance the desire to maximize the information available to the reader with the need to maintain readability. Use this principle to decide whether mentioning alternative names in the first sentence, elsewhere in the article, or not at all." And shoehorning in "origin of life" as a bolded alternative name is just clutter that makes the opening sentence more awkward, that anyone reading can easily gather that this is what the article's about anyway. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article should be called "Origin of life" as that is the common name. "Abiogenesis" is so technical that even though I have read much on this topic I don't remember seeing it. I realize that I'm reopening the name question; I'm not sure how one should do that. Any suggestions? Zaslav (talk) 05:48, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really that technical of a term. Remsense诉 05:50, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not too technical to those who already know it, but compared to "Origin of life" it is much less known and quite technical. Zaslav (talk) 20:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do think precision trumps recognizability in the WP:CRITERIA here—we could retitle Ornithology to Study of birds, but I don't think we should. Much of the potential downside here is mitigated by our use of redirects.Remsense ‥ 诉 20:25, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quebec data

The last paragraph of the introduction of the article states in part "Fossil micro-organisms appear to have lived within hydrothermal vent precipitates dated 3.77 to 4.28 Gya from Quebec..." It seems to me that this statement is based on findings from one group of researchers, concerning the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, that are not widely accepted. (In contrast to the data from Australia which are widely accepted.) If so, I would suggest that this statement about the findings in Canada could be changed to indicate that this is not widely agreed upon. For example, it could be changed to say "Some studies have suggested that fossil micro-organisms may have lived within hydrothermal vent precipitates dated 3.77 to 4.28 Gya from Quebec..." T g7 (talk) 04:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; if it is not generally accepted then it should be qualified. Zaslav (talk) 05:45, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

do you have any sources that explicitly disagree with the Quebec data? Just because research is singular does not mean it is controversial. Remsense ‥ 论 03:27, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301926822001723?via%3Dihub 01:26, 10 October 2024 (UTC) T g7 (talk) 01:26, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Remsense ‥ 论 06:01, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hypothesis vs Aristotle's "theory"

Given the article accurately emphasizes that abiogenesis is a hypothesis and does not yet qualify as a scientific theory, should the word 'theory' be used when describing Aristotle's position of 'spontaneous generation'? Khilker15 (talk) 18:53, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The term "theory" can be misleading, because it can be either for a scientific theory or for its informal usage, a mere guess based on some limited clues and some intuition. As this is a scientific topic, I would suggest to use "theory" only when we meant "scientific theory", and avoid the second meaning as much as possible, using synonyms if needed. As for Aristotle, the scientific method did not exist yet at the time of the ancient Greeks, so they could never have formulated a scientific theory to begin with. Cambalachero (talk) 19:20, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The spontaneous generation page does use the term "scientific theory". Scientific theories and the scientific method are not the same. I don't think there is an issue using the 'theory of spontaneous generation' as numerous scientists did believe this until it was disproven by Pasteur in the 19th century. For sure abiogenesis is a hypothesis, though. Ramos1990 (talk) 00:55, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The so-called scientific method (I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, anyhow) is a recent creation in the history of science. There was science long before the scientific method. Zaslav (talk) 20:12, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Habitable" Earth in top figure

In the figure, the "habitable world" picture is today's earth, which has little in common with the habitable earth of 4.x billion years ago. I think it would be better to show a picture that plausibly depicts an initial habitable earth (which, of course, would be deadly to most current life). I'm not able to arrange this myself; sorry. Zaslav (talk) 03:49, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The image is similar to the image in the research paper cited in the caption [3]. Ramos1990 (talk) 04:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The image is not meant to be "Earth when abiogenesis took place", but rather an "habitable planet" as a concept. Modern Earth gives the idea better than a hellfire ball would. Cambalachero (talk) 21:54, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very true. But I get the reason why it was brought up. Ramos1990 (talk) 10:20, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] See List of scientific societies rejecting intelligent design.

[2] As reported in Newsweek magazine, 29 June 1987, Page 23: "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. Earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science..." See also Public beliefs about evolution and creation, Robinson, B. A. 1995. for a discussion on acceptance of evolution.

[1]

[2]