A New Take on lathe Origin of Life

[Bluefinger]

In this article, a scientist said to be the next Darwin has provided a new explanation on the origin of life.

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/the-man-who-may-one-up-darwin/39217

Basically, atoms arrange themselves from non-living material to more efficiently use energy. The article about Jeremy England explains it better.

Thoughts?

[Leonardo]

There seems to be two different 'topics' convoluted into one in the article, and perhaps in the 'insight' Mr England is said to have uncovered.

First, the phenomenon of inanimate matter spontaneously rearranging itself into an energy efficient form under certain conditions is not really ground-breaking. In fact, this is a fundamental assumption of many advances we have already made in chemistry and physics.

So, what is it about Mr England's hypothesis that has caused such a stir?

That's probably that he has suggested that such rearrangement, coupled with the capacity for self-replication meets the requirements to be defined as 'life'.

Now that is somewhat controversial, and is probably what has got the scientific community in a tizz. That buzz is probably not about Mr England's hypothesis being 'ground-breaking', but about what it is that actually constitutes 'life'.

Personally, I don't think what qualifies as 'life' is as simple as Mr England suggests - but 'life' doesn't really have a hard-and-fast definition so he does have some freedom with respect how he wants to define it.