Evolution Question?

Question

How did the "Ur-organism" come about. Abiogenesis is generally used to explain this, but does that not contradict Francesco Redi's experiment that refuted Spontaneous generation?

Answer 1

'Spontaneous generation' was the theory that whole, visible organisms could arise naturally from inanimate substance. Flies were produced automagically from the air, earthworms from the dirt, and maggots from meat.

It was this last that Redi disproved. He found that maggots didn't come automagically from meat... they were produced from flies and became flies themselves. All life, it seemed, came from other life.

Which does leave us with the question of the very first life, as you aptly point out.

Modern theories on the subject, however, are about as different from spontaneous generation as night and day. Where spontaneous generation theorized that small creatures might be produced whole-cloth in a matter of hours, even the most generous of modern theories doesn't suggest anything more ambitious than something simpler than the simplest lifeforms around today being produced over millions of years.

Perhaps an analogy might help. If an electronics store worked by the rules of spontaneous generation, the owner could just leave out a block of metal every night and come back in the morning and find trays full of computer chips (that would certainly be nice). If an electronics store worked by modern theories, then an owner might expect to find something like a piece of wire in a million years if his store was the size of the planet (which doesn't even sound implausible).

The big problem we have with all theories of abiogenesis right now is that there's almost no way to tell them apart. If they're right, then experimentation will be almost pointless (it will take too long). The best way to distinguish among them would be to find life somewhere else in the universe that had developed under conditions different from our own. Then we might really know what was important and what was not in the development of life.

And since we only just the other day found one (1) planet that could concievably have life as we know it... I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Answer 2

Abiogenisis and spontaneous generation are two quite distinct things; except in the minds of creationists. Abiogenisis has only generated hypothesis and hypothesis are if...and questions, not " explanations ".

Answer 3

Simply put, we don't know. While related to evolution, this isn't addressed by evolution since it's a process to explain changes in organisms over time, not how life began.