Downvoted for the sheer number of reversals of what used to be my background assumptions about biology without an obvious identification of a single lever that could be used to push on all of those variables.
I am now interested in Wachtershauser, but it takes more than a good LW post to make me think that everything I know is wrong and that it was all disproved by the same person.
You have raised my belief in your proposition from near-zero to about 30%, but that’s still way short of 70%.
Downvoted for the sheer number of reversals of what used to be my background assumptions about biology without an obvious identification of a single lever that could be used to push on all of those variables.
I am now interested in Wachtershauser, but it takes more than a good LW post to make me think that everything I know is wrong and that it was all disproved by the same person.
Well, he hasn’t disproved anything, merely offered an alternative hypothesis. A convincing one, IMHO.
But there is a “single lever”. Wachtershauser believes that the origin of life was “autotrophic”. Everyone else—Miller, Orgel, Deamer, Dyson, even Morowitz on his bad days, thinks that the first living things were “heterotrophic”. And since defining those two terms and explaining their significance would take more work than I want to expend right now, I’ll leave the explaining to wikipedia and Google. I’ll be happy to answer follow-up questions, though.
Everyone else—Miller, Orgel, Deamer, Dyson, even Morowitz on his bad days, thinks that the first living things were “heterotrophic”.
Er, that is certainly not true of A. G. Cairns-Smith! He had the first organisms made of inorganic compounds and getting energy from supersaturated solutions way back in the 1960s—long before Wachtershauser weighed in on the topic.
Cairns-Smith thinks that the first living things were clay—completely inorganic, yes.
So, to include him in my listing of the deluded heterotrophic theorists, I would have to point out that he believes that the first organism incorporating organic carbon got that organic carbon from the environment (soup) rather than making it itself.
back in the 1960s—long before Wachtershauser weighed in
We are only talking about 15 years or so. And it doesn’t mean much to be first. Nor to be clever. You also need to be right. Wachtershauser got the important stuff right.
You would have to point that out, yes, and it would be nicest if you could supply references. I don’t remember Cairns-Smith expressing strong views on that topic.
He tended to address the entry of carbon along the lines of:
look, the entry of carbon came later; natural selection did it; all it needed was some possible paths, and so—since the details of what happened are lost in the mists of time—here is an example of one...
Wachtershauser got the important stuff right.
Possibly—but only if you are talking about the origin of cells. In Crystalline Ancestry, cells are seen as high tech developments that came along well after the origin of living and evolving systems—and the story of the origin of evolution and natural selection is quite different from Wachtershauser’s story. From that perspective Wachtershauser was not really wrong—he just wasn’t describing the actual origin, but rather some events that happened much later on.
You would have to point that out, yes, and it would be nicest if you could supply references. I don’t remember Cairns-Smith expressing strong views on that topic.
He tended to address the entry of carbon along the lines of:
look, the entry of carbon came later; natural selection did it; all it needed was some possible paths, and so here is an example of one...
Ok, I reread Chapter 8 (“Entry of Carbon”) in “Genetic Takeover”. You are right that he mostly remains agnostic on the question of autotrophic vs heterotrophic. That, in itself is remarkable and admirable. But, in his discussion of the origin of organic chirality (pp307-308) he seems to be pretty clearly assuming heterotrophy—he talks of selecting molecules of the desired handedness from racemic mixtures, rather than simply pointing out that the chiral crystal (flaw) structure will naturally lead to chiral organic synthesis.
Heterotrophy is kind-of allowed after you have an ecosystem of creatures that are messing about with organic chemistry as part of their living processes. At that stage there might well be an organic soup created by their waste products, decayed carcases, etc.
This autotrophic vs heterotrophic scene is your area interest—and efforts to paint Cairns-Smith as a heterotrophic theorist strike me as a bit of a misguided smear campaign. His proposed earliest creatures are made of clay! They “eat” supersaturated mineral solutions. You can’t get much less “organic” than that.
Yes, from your (Cairns-Smith) viewpoint that may be what you think Wachtershauser was saying. However, what he actually said is that Cairns-Smith is wrong. Full stop.
Please, Tim, we’ve been through this many times. Your favorite theory and my favorite theory are completely different.
If you want to provide links to your clay origin web pages, please do so. Don’t demand that I provide them with free advertising. But if I am putting your words into Cairns-Smith’s mouth, then I apologize.
That is a bit of a strange response, IMO. I don’t know if you can be bothered with continuing our OOL discussion here—but, as you probably know, I don’t think there’s any good evidence that Cairns-Smith was incorrect—from Wachtershauser—or anyone else—and if you know differently, I would be delighted to hear about it!
Maybe that’s not what you are saying. Maybe you are just saying that you think Wachtershauser provided a complete story that you find parsimonious—and which doesn’t require earlier stages. That would not be so newsworthy for me, I already know all that.
Downvoted for the sheer number of reversals of what used to be my background assumptions about biology without an obvious identification of a single lever that could be used to push on all of those variables.
I am now interested in Wachtershauser, but it takes more than a good LW post to make me think that everything I know is wrong and that it was all disproved by the same person.
You have raised my belief in your proposition from near-zero to about 30%, but that’s still way short of 70%.
Errh. If you are disagreeing with me, doesn’t that mean you should upvote?
Sorry, I got confused. Duly changed.
Well, he hasn’t disproved anything, merely offered an alternative hypothesis. A convincing one, IMHO.
But there is a “single lever”. Wachtershauser believes that the origin of life was “autotrophic”. Everyone else—Miller, Orgel, Deamer, Dyson, even Morowitz on his bad days, thinks that the first living things were “heterotrophic”. And since defining those two terms and explaining their significance would take more work than I want to expend right now, I’ll leave the explaining to wikipedia and Google. I’ll be happy to answer follow-up questions, though.
Er, that is certainly not true of A. G. Cairns-Smith! He had the first organisms made of inorganic compounds and getting energy from supersaturated solutions way back in the 1960s—long before Wachtershauser weighed in on the topic.
Cairns-Smith thinks that the first living things were clay—completely inorganic, yes. So, to include him in my listing of the deluded heterotrophic theorists, I would have to point out that he believes that the first organism incorporating organic carbon got that organic carbon from the environment (soup) rather than making it itself.
We are only talking about 15 years or so. And it doesn’t mean much to be first. Nor to be clever. You also need to be right. Wachtershauser got the important stuff right.
You would have to point that out, yes, and it would be nicest if you could supply references. I don’t remember Cairns-Smith expressing strong views on that topic.
He tended to address the entry of carbon along the lines of:
look, the entry of carbon came later; natural selection did it; all it needed was some possible paths, and so—since the details of what happened are lost in the mists of time—here is an example of one...
Possibly—but only if you are talking about the origin of cells. In Crystalline Ancestry, cells are seen as high tech developments that came along well after the origin of living and evolving systems—and the story of the origin of evolution and natural selection is quite different from Wachtershauser’s story. From that perspective Wachtershauser was not really wrong—he just wasn’t describing the actual origin, but rather some events that happened much later on.
Ok, I reread Chapter 8 (“Entry of Carbon”) in “Genetic Takeover”. You are right that he mostly remains agnostic on the question of autotrophic vs heterotrophic. That, in itself is remarkable and admirable. But, in his discussion of the origin of organic chirality (pp307-308) he seems to be pretty clearly assuming heterotrophy—he talks of selecting molecules of the desired handedness from racemic mixtures, rather than simply pointing out that the chiral crystal (flaw) structure will naturally lead to chiral organic synthesis.
Heterotrophy is kind-of allowed after you have an ecosystem of creatures that are messing about with organic chemistry as part of their living processes. At that stage there might well be an organic soup created by their waste products, decayed carcases, etc.
This autotrophic vs heterotrophic scene is your area interest—and efforts to paint Cairns-Smith as a heterotrophic theorist strike me as a bit of a misguided smear campaign. His proposed earliest creatures are made of clay! They “eat” supersaturated mineral solutions. You can’t get much less “organic” than that.
Yes, from your (Cairns-Smith) viewpoint that may be what you think Wachtershauser was saying. However, what he actually said is that Cairns-Smith is wrong. Full stop.
Please, Tim, we’ve been through this many times. Your favorite theory and my favorite theory are completely different.
If you want to provide links to your clay origin web pages, please do so. Don’t demand that I provide them with free advertising. But if I am putting your words into Cairns-Smith’s mouth, then I apologize.
That is a bit of a strange response, IMO. I don’t know if you can be bothered with continuing our OOL discussion here—but, as you probably know, I don’t think there’s any good evidence that Cairns-Smith was incorrect—from Wachtershauser—or anyone else—and if you know differently, I would be delighted to hear about it!
Maybe that’s not what you are saying. Maybe you are just saying that you think Wachtershauser provided a complete story that you find parsimonious—and which doesn’t require earlier stages. That would not be so newsworthy for me, I already know all that.
Then you should upvote, not downvote!