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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). |
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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. |
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:
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. Abiogenesis is just a theory, not a fact. There is scientific evidence against abiogenesis. References
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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. |
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:
Or to emphasize the historical question of how it happened on Earth:
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)
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)
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)
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)
"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)
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)
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)
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)