Where did life begin?
Where did life begin? That, my friend, is the most delightful mystery
we have ever had to contemplate. The people of almost every culture
in the world have invented mythical stories about how life began on
Earth. I must admit I am especially fond of the one that comes
from the Arandas Aborigines of Australia. According to them,
fantastic creatures, which had been sleeping underground, slowly
awoke during “Dreamtime” (the beginning of time), and rose to
the surface of the planet to make life begin. What poetry!
Since ancient times, scientists have also tried to explain
our origins. Before getting into what we know
This aboriginal
now about the story of life, let’s take a look at
work of art,
some of the important people and theories that
painted on
have marked the history of scientific knowledge.
the walls of
Spontaneous generation
a cave in
Australia, dates
back to around 20,000 years BC.
It represents the “Dreamtime” creatures.
The people of ancient times believed that frogs and
snakes could be born out of the mud, that bamboo
plants could generate aphids, and that flies could form in garbage
and sweat. This theory that non-living matter can give birth to living
things is called spontaneous generation. And even though it
sounds like hocus-pocus, this theory was not questioned by
anyone for a very long time! Starting in the 17th century,
however, a few scientists went against the idea of
spontaneous generation. From then on, there were clashes
between those for and against the theory. Take a look at this
priceless excerpt from a newspaper of 1660. It was
given to me by my antique dealer friend Pietro Dusto. You
will learn a little more about Jan Baptist Van Helmont and
Francesco Redi, two people who marked this era.
14
The Florentine Freethink
er, november 22, 1660
t Redi versus Van Helmont
According to Jan Ba
ptist Van this week
that this “recipe for giv
Helmont, a physician
ing
and chemist birth to
mice” is totally absurd
from Brussels, filling
.
a vase with According
to a well-informed source
grains of wheat and sea
,
ling it with a Redi us
ed eight jars contain
sweat-soaked shirt will
ing
lead to the different
meats — four of the jar
creation of mice 21
s
days later. were lef
t open, and the other
Biologist Francesco Re
four
di, however, were sea
led. He noticed that magg
succeeded in demonstra
ots
ting earlier invaded
only the open jars, in wh
ich
T
adult flies could have lai
d their eggs.
Redi therefore proved
that life
couldn’t be born spon
taneously, as
Mister Van Helmont claim
ed.
Anonymous
In the 19th century, another famous scientific quarrel took place between
two Frenchmen, Félix-Archimède Pouchet and Louis Pasteur. While
Pouchet supported the theory of spontaneous generation, Pasteur believed
that only life could generate life. To prove it, Pasteur performed some
experiments showing that any appearance of life in a closed place was
due to invisible germs transported by air. He passed on the results of his
experiments during a conference at the Sorbonne University in Paris in
1864. Pasteur succeeded in convincing the public who had come to hear
him, thus putting to an end the quarrels between supporters and
opponents of the theory of spontaneous generation.
Pasteur
ins of life is marked by many quarrels
The history of the theories on the origare
es based on religion. Don’t
etim
som
s
ent
um
arg
se
The
ts.
ntis
scie
between
values, and it is often painful for
an
hum
of
rt
hea
the
at
lie
efs
beli
t
tha
get
for
asked my dear friend Cardinal
people to have their beliefs questioned. n.I Her
e is his reply.
Bookman for his opinion on the questio
My dear Genius,
All the great religions have their own story about how the
world was created. Genesis, or the story of Creation, is a
marvelous account in the Old Testament (the first book of
s,
the Bible). According to Genesis, Earth, along with plant
.
days
six
in
God
by
animals, man, and woman, were created
There was a time when anyone who questioned these
teachings, especially during the Middle Ages, would have
been treated very harshly by the Church. Happily, my
such
friend, we have come a long way since then, and stories
.
word
for
as Genesis are no longer meant to be taken word
There are important scientists today who are also religious
ion
believers. Many are of the opinion that Science and Relig
tific
scien
that
can go hand in hand. I personally think
explanations provide an interesting vision that can work
well with a belief in God. We must never forget to respect
all people’s beliefs.
This magnificent canvas was painted in 1550
by Italian artist Jacopo Robusti, who was
known as Tintoretto. It represents God’s
creation of the animals. Isn’t it beautiful?
me
P.S. I will be in Montreal this fall, if you will still welco
me to your home, of course. I am dying of impatience to
show you some precious documents that I uncovered in
the Vatican library.
Your devoted friend,
Cardinal Bookman
7
Panspermia, or life from the cosmos
In the 19th century, a theory came along to explain the
origins of life on Earth. It was called panspermia. According
to this theory, life is of extraterrestrial origin. One of its biggest
supporters was a German named Hermann Richter.
Svante Arrhenius
In 1865, Richter declared that life had come from
space and that Earth could have been “seeded” by
tiny particles of life buried inside meteorites. Other
December 1902
scientists, such as Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius,
Dear diar y,
joined the ranks of panspermia supporters. My friend
Pietro Dusto kindly lent me this document. It is a
translation of one of the pages from this famous
I am convinced
th at a number of
scientists are
chemist’s diary. I will let you judge his highly
heading do wn the
w
ro
ng
road by look ing fo
original ideas for yourself…
r the orig in s
of life
here on Earth. C
ontrary to good ol
d Richter,
ho we ver, I think
th at germ s roamin
g the cosmos coul
ha ve tra veled to E
d
arth on the light
ra
ys
from stars.
I will soon m ak
e this conviction
of mine public…
Svante
e
ssor,
Dear Profe her told me that ther
t
o
r
My big b gs in the dust and
in
are living th e cosmos.
th
comets of
?
Is this true
Stephanie
’s question ice,
ie
n
a
h
p
te
S
g
n
I passed alogood friend Dr. Izin Spa
to my very sicist. I will leave it to him
the astrophy
to answer...
Murchison’s
comet
8
Dear friend,
I received the question sent to you
by young Stephanie. Here is my
response. Up until now, radio astr
onomers (specialists who study
the rays
emitted by stars) have identified
more than 50 organic molecules
(chemical compounds found in
living things) moving through inte
rstellar
space. In addition, analyses of me
teorites that have fallen to Earth,
like the
ones that fell in Orgueuil, France
(1864) and Murchison, Australia
(1969),
showed that these space rocks con
tained substances of an organic
type.
But wait! Even if these so-called
“organic” molecules are part of the
makeup of living things, the molecu
les themselves ARE NOT alive! In
spite
of all the efforts made by my astr
onomer colleagues, there is still
to this
day no proof of extraterrestrial life.
I will keep you posted. Please give
my
warmest regards to your young read
ers.
Take care
Izin
The chemical origins of life
In the 1920s, scientists Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin of the U.S.S.R. and John Haldane
of the U.K. claimed that life appeared following chemical transformations in young planet
Earth’s atmosphere. Their theory can be summed up in
the following way:
energy
Energy from the Sun’s rays
+ Electricity from thunderstorms
Gases in the atmosphere
= Prebiotic molecules
gases
Falling to Earth with the rain, prebiotic (which means
“before life”) molecules would have concentrated in
pools. They made up a kind of soup scientists call
the “primordial soup,” which gave birth to the
first living cells. I have drawn a simple
diagram for you that summarizes
the scientists’ idea.
electricity
primordial soup
In 1952, my friend Stanley Miller (at the time a student at
the University of Chicago) wanted to verify if Oparin and
Haldane were correct. In his laboratory he designed a
system of glass balls and tubes in which he brought together
the conditions that existed at the moment of the appearance
of life: a mixture of methane, hydrogen, and ammonia (the
gases in the primitive atmosphere), water (the oceans) and
electrical discharges (thunderstorms). His results were clear.
A week after the start of his experiment, large organic
molecules appeared!
Here is the system of
Miller used to perfor tubes and glass balls that
m his famous experim
ent.
Although we know now that the gases in Earth’s primitive atmosphere were probably different
from those used by Miller, it’s still possible that life could have appeared as the result of similar chemical
reactions. Yet, in spite of the efforts of scientists in every field, no one has succeeded in recreating the cell,
this tiny living marvel at the base of every living organism. Therefore, the question of how life began
remains. You know, the idea of not knowing everything doesn’t really bother me. It adds a sense of
mystery to life that makes it much more fascinating!
9
The paths of life
Every theory that comes along raises a
whole new set of questions. Whether life
was “born” out of the primordial soup or
whether it fell from the sky, the question
remains: what path did it take to produce
the complex living things that are plants and
animals? Many thinkers and scientists have
tried to come up with explanations—some
are quite daring, to say the least! Here is
one of them, presented by my favorite
columnist Itza Mazing
Incredible But True!
by Itza Mazing
Living beings
with removable
parts!
n Empedocles, who
Greek philosopher and physicia
B.C., believed that
423
to
.
C
.
lived from about 483 B
ld give birth to
cou
e,
insid
e
flam
a
mud, heated by
out a head, limbs
“bits” of living beings. Eyes with
a trunk would
out
without a body, and legs with
form strange
to
tally
come together acciden
of cattle and
ds
hea
the
with
men
monsters, like
the beings that
giraffes with pelican beaks! Only
y parts could
bod
of
inherited a decent collection
tence, the
exis
ible
oss
imp
survive. Doomed to an
rest would die.
In the 18th century, two clans opposed each other:
those who believed that all species had been created
as they were and had not changed in any way, and
those who claimed that species evolved, or changed
over time. Here are three scientists who profoundly
marked their era.
Frenchman Georges-Louis
Leclerc, the Count of
Buffon, is one of the first
scientists to support the
theory that living things
transformed or evolved. His
ideas angered the Church,
who considered its comments
to be against religion. Don’t
forget that the Catholic
Count of Buffon
(1707-1788)
Church taught that living
things had not changed since
the day they were created. Buffon spent much of
his life working on an enormous reference work
entitled “Histoire Naturelle” (Natural History). It
was published in 36 volumes between the years
1749 and 1788. Here is the title page. This
priceless treasure was discovered at a Parisian
antique shop.
Scientifically Yours, January 2005
10
Contrary to Buffon and
Lamarck, Frenchman
Georges Cuvier believed
that living species had
never changed. He also
believed that a number
of large natural disasters,
which he called
“revolutions,” had led to
the disappearance of
many species at different
Georges Cuvier
times throughout the
(1769-1832)
history of Earth. Cuvier
was not entirely wrong, you know. We will
see over the course of this scrapbook that the
history of life was marked by several periods
of extinctions during which many living species
disappeared forever. It just goes to show you
that old ideas are not necessarily crazy ones!
Here is Frenchman Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine
de Monet, the Chevalier of
Lamarck. In 1809, he
published his “Zoological
Philosophy”, according to
which all animals evolved
from a common ancestor.
Lamarck is the author of
the first real theory on
the evolution of species.
Here is a brief summary
of his ideas.
Chevalier of Lamarck
(1744-1829)
Evolution, according to Lamarck
According to Lamarck’s theory,
species evolve so they can better
adapt to the kind of surroundings
in which they live. Lamarck
claims that frequent use of a
particular organ develops it and
makes it stronger. On the other hand,
and
a useless organ gradually weakens
theory,
ends up disappearing. To support his
mple of
this brilliant naturalist uses the exa
stretch
the giraffe, which must constantly
s in the
its neck to eat the leaves of tree
habit
savannah. According to Lamarck, this
neck
helped to make the giraffe’s legs and
that
es
longer, allowing it to reach leav
und.
are nearly 20 feet (6 m) off the gro
The giraffes that developed longer
necks would then pass on this feature
Living History, p. 12
to their offspring.
If you ever have a chance to go to
Paris, don’t miss visiting the National
Museum of Natural History. Several
famous scientists, such as Buffon, Cuvier,
and Lamarck, worked there. Today
the museum features exhibition halls
that are open to everyone, laboratories,
gardens, and a splendid library where
I love to browse whenever I’m in
Paris for a visit!
If species really did evolve according to Lamarck’s principles,
an athlete training for the Olympic Games would give birth
to… muscular babies! As you know, this is not what happens
at all. Larmarck’s highly original ideas displeased the King
as well as the religious and scientific communities of his
time, but contributed greatly to the advancement of
theories on the evolution of species.
11
I n t he
Britain. .
t
a
e
r
The p 19th century, a revo
G
h
g
arwin
lutionary wind blew throu
D
erson res
s
e
l
r
a
h
ponsible for this storm of new ideas was C
He is c
n.
onsidered t
he founder of the modern theory of evolutio
EVOLUTION : (from de
Latin evolutio
[unrolling]) A set of changes
undergone by living
species over the course of geol
ogical eras, resulting
in the appearance of new form
s.
Portraits of the Scientists
1882)
Charles Robert Dar win (1809-
Subject: An anecdote
Date : September 17, 200
4
To: Professor Genius
n February 12,
DarwininShrwasewsbor
bur y, England. He
Dear friend,
1809,
ed
began studies in medicine, but hat
see
to
r
bea
dissections and could not
on
the suffering of patients operated
ied
stud
n
without anesthesia. He the
of
theology at the University
the
for
Cambridge, but his passion
n
natural sciences was stronger tha
the
of
r
his desire to be a ministe
nd,
Church. With the help of his frie
nslow, Darwin signed up as
He
s
ven
botany professor John Ste
tish naval vessel HMS Beagle,
botanist and geologist on the Bri
on December 27, 1831.
which set sail on a 5-year expedition
How is your ambitious scr
apbook project about
life coming along? I am
sending you this delicious
anecdote that I hope wil
l find a place in your
book… Did you know that
Darwin nearly lost his
chance to join the crew
of the Beagle? The ship’s
captain, Robert FitzRoy,
believed he could judge
a man’s character by his
profile. He doubted that
anyone with a short nose
like Darwin had enough
energy and determination
for the voyage. Darwin’s
nose turned out to be a
liar, my friend, happily
for us and for the world
of science!
Frank Brightmann,
Director of the History
of Science
and Technology Departmen
t
University of Brainston
Portraits of the Scientists, p. 33
Here is a map
dating from 1837.
This collector’s item,
which traces Darwin’s
fabulous voyage around
the world, was sent to
me by my antique dealer
friend Pietro Dusto. The
map’s author is unknown,
but I like to think that
it could have been done
by Darwin himself…
Beagle
12
4
8
1
5
7
2
9
6
3
MAJOR STAGES IN DARWIN'S VOYAGE
1. Brazil
4. Galapagos Islands
2. Argentina
5. Pacific Ocean
3. Cape Horn
6. New Zealand
7. Australia
8. Indian Ocean
9. Cape of Good Hope
During his voyage around the
world, Darwin took notes, collected almost 4,000 different
specimens, and made drawings of everything he saw. The finches of
the Galapagos Islands particularly caught his attention. Although the birds
Camarhynchus crassirostris
resembled one another, they had a different shaped beak depending on where they lived (bud and leaf eater)
in the chain of islands. Short and squat, long or pointy, their beaks seemed to be
adapted to a particular way of eating. According to Darwin, these observations
proved that the different types of finches on the Galapagos Islands had all evolved
from one and the same species! On November 24, 1859, almost 30 years after
setting sail on the Beagle,
Darwin published his
extraordinary “Origin of
Evolution, according to Darwin
identical. Some of them
Species” book. In a single day,
The individuals in a species are not all
m certain advantages in a
every one of the 1,250 copies
possess characteristics that give the
Certhidea
, for example,
printed was sold. Here is a
given environment. With giraffes
olivacea
e a better
brief summary of Darwin’s
(insect eater)
individuals with longer necks hav
the trees
revolutionary theory.
chance of reaching leaves high up in
ks
nec
of the savannah. Those with shorter
d
die because they cannot fee
themselves adequately. The giraffes
with the longest necks reproduce
among themselves and transmit
their “winning” characteristics to
their offspring, from one generation
to the next. In this way, new species
slowly and gradually make their
appearance, while others die out.
Darwin called this phenomenon,
which drives nature to select the
individuals best adapted to their
environment, “natural selection.”
The “Origin of Species”
hit religious and scientific circles
like a bomb because, according
to the theory Darwin proposed,
the human being would be a very close
cousin of the ape. It is said that, after
reading Darwin’s book, the wife of the
Bishop of Worcester declared, “Descended
from the apes! My dear, let us hope
that it is not true, but if it is,
let us pray it will not become
widely known.”
Geospiza
conirostris
(seed eater)
Living History, p. 22
d a letter
In 1858, Darwin receiveyo
g British
from Alfred Wallace, a un
plain his
naturalist who wanted to ex
. Deeply
ideas on the origin of species
rived
disturbed that Wallace hadouart
at the same conclusions abto be the
evolution, Darwin rushed of his
first to publish the results years.
reflections of the last 30
13