Conflicting Models for the Origin of Life

The number of publications on the origin of life has been doubling every decade from 1970 until today and now exceeds 70,000, illustrating the ever-growing interest of the scientific community and the public in this area. With our explosion of knowledge about the niches of extremophiles, discoveries of the vast numbers and varieties of exoplanets, and new fossil evidence for life extending nearly to Earth’s beginning, many hypotheses have been put forth on the place, timing and manner for the origin of life. Old and new debates abound in the scientific community, demonstrating the lack of consensus among scholars with the emergence of champions for one point of view over another. The purpose of this book is to bring together the various arguments and points of view on the origin of life, highlighting their differences and conflicts, illustrating these various points of view in relation to concept, mechanism and plausibility for each of the theories.

In this book we include dialogue between proponents of alternative hypotheses by giving them consecutive chapters, and allowing for criticisms and response sections after each chapter. In addition, an attempt is made to elicit definitions for life that are more rigorous and consistent than currently available. The use of consistent approaches has also resulted in the logical inclusion of minimal approaches to the origin of life, both investigating the original origin, and the possibility of an impending second creation - of artificial life.