Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”
David Deamer has written another book, Assembling Life, on the origin of life. It is unapologetically polemic, presenting Deamer’s view that life originated in fresh water hydrothermal fields on volcanic islands on early Earth, arguing that this provided a unique environment not just for organic che...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
MDPI
2020
|
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125661 |
| _version_ | 1826205493956182016 |
|---|---|
| author | Bains, William |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Bains, William |
| author_sort | Bains, William |
| collection | MIT |
| description | David Deamer has written another book, Assembling Life, on the origin of life. It is unapologetically polemic, presenting Deamer’s view that life originated in fresh water hydrothermal fields on volcanic islands on early Earth, arguing that this provided a unique environment not just for organic chemistry but for the self-assembling structure that drive that chemistry and form the basis of structure in life. It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field, but is it convincing? I argue that the Origin of Life field as a whole is unconvincing, generating results in Toy Domains that cannot be scaled to any real world scenario. I suggest that, by analogy with the history of artificial intelligence and solar astronomy, we need much more scale, and fundamentally new ideas, to take the field forward. Keywords: origin of life; hydrothermal; alkaline vent; Copernican principle; toy domain |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:14:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/125661 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:14:00Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | MDPI |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1256612022-09-28T12:50:12Z Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” Bains, William Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences David Deamer has written another book, Assembling Life, on the origin of life. It is unapologetically polemic, presenting Deamer’s view that life originated in fresh water hydrothermal fields on volcanic islands on early Earth, arguing that this provided a unique environment not just for organic chemistry but for the self-assembling structure that drive that chemistry and form the basis of structure in life. It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field, but is it convincing? I argue that the Origin of Life field as a whole is unconvincing, generating results in Toy Domains that cannot be scaled to any real world scenario. I suggest that, by analogy with the history of artificial intelligence and solar astronomy, we need much more scale, and fundamentally new ideas, to take the field forward. Keywords: origin of life; hydrothermal; alkaline vent; Copernican principle; toy domain 2020-06-03T18:53:42Z 2020-06-03T18:53:42Z 2020-02 2019-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/BookReview 2075-1729 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125661 Bains, William, "Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s 'Assembling Life.'" Life 10, 12 (Feb. 2020): no. 18 doi 10.3390/life10020018 ©2020 Author(s) 10.3390/life10020018 Life Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf MDPI MDPI |
| spellingShingle | Bains, William Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” |
| title | Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” |
| title_full | Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” |
| title_fullStr | Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” |
| title_full_unstemmed | Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” |
| title_short | Getting beyond the toy domain: meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life” |
| title_sort | getting beyond the toy domain meditations on david deamer s assembling life |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125661 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT bainswilliam gettingbeyondthetoydomainmeditationsondaviddeamersassemblinglife |