Dear Victor,

I think you misplaced these numbers: it should be 300 000 plant species and about 3 000 000 animal species, right? ;-)

”Do you believe, like Darwinists, that 3 million species could breed on and under seabed and ground from one or several accidentally-appeared DNAs?”

Do you want to say that only God knows what happened there?

There is that ugly word, belief.  Science has no need of belief. It is evidence driven. It is sloppy use of language, or misplaced inquiry, that perpetuates the notion of belief outside of its proper context, religion.

As such, there is no point in engaging in a discussion here, aside to chide you into perhaps thinking outside of your biases.

The key event in multicellular life must have occurred when specialization arose, perhaps as a mutualistic relationship between bacteria. You doubtless are aware of mitochondria, for example, and horizontal gene transfer.

Dear Bartosz, 

Thank you. You are right. I am sorry. I corrected the question. 

But this relation does not influence either the question or answers. Isn't that so?  

Dear Zsolt, 

I would like to know the answers to my question only. 

As for your question, allow me to address you to my ResearchGate page. 

Believe by believe? Yes. But I'm sure that "selection" [Natural selection] and "accident" [accidentally-appeared] are different situations.

Dear Victor,

well... as pointed above, 'believe' is not the right one word here, but... ok... let say I/we accept that , from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

And there is no need to add anything to what Darwin has written more than 150 years ago:-)

To say that scientific theory is a belief does simply says that such theory can be falsified.  That we are not talking of matter of fact and that the idea can be subjected to criticism and even be questioned.   Darwin's theory is now the dominant theory for more than a century and all of us where told in early age that it was believed to be true by most biologists.  It is all fine but we have to remind ourself that science is not a religious creed and it we do not want to be so we have the right to question all its basic creed and for that we have to call them: scientific beliefs, to remind us that we should never take any of them for grant.

Victor, you must add many billions of prokaryotic species (up to 4*E6 species per one ton of soil as calculated, although, the bacterial species are not equal to others), and all are likely had one common ansestor (CA). It does not mean that all lived at the Earth organisms since the 3.9 Gya had the same CA, or we will not find once an organism different from all known.  

Dear Alex, 

OK, but what is the answer to the question?

Victor, I have read your works (from researchgate site) - I like more the idea of Pobisk Kuznetsov that the Life (in any form) has appeared at the first moment of Universe (if it ever has happened). Even if it looks non-scientific.

Louis Brassard concluded "...scientific beliefs, to remind us that we should never take any of them for grant."  I think he encapsulates the issue.  Scientific theories are not beliefs.  Biological evolution, as proposed by Darwin, was incomplete. It has only strengthened with time because data supports it.  It is an accepted theory, buttressed by numerous, independent lines of evidence.  There is more evidence to support evolution than gravity.  People are confused by the notions of hypotheses, theory, and law. These are subject to differences of interpretation in what constitutes sufficient evidence.  Hypotheses are ideas. Sometimes they are studied and evidence is provided to support them.  Theories are more rigorously studied ideas that integrate multiple hypotheses.  Regarding laws, the notion is that no further testing is going to disprove them.  Logicians and mathematicians are prone to use words like proof and law onto their formulas because they are internally consistent within the rules of the form. However, if we were to apply the SAME degree of scrutiny to Newton's law of gravitation, we would very quickly reduce it to theory because we know from Einstein that the original definition was incomplete.   By this line of reasoning, because evolution is highly nuanced and we continue to find new evidence, it is conservatively referred to as a theory.

Andrei, you are right about Vernadsky. P. Kuznetsov just had better justification for it. 

My answer in definetly "no". In my opinion evolution of DNA and evolution of life is directed. See, for example my paper

Quantum information and the problem of mechanisms of biological evolution.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258253080_Quantum_information_and_the_problem_of_mechanisms_of_biological_evolution

Article Quantum information and the problem of mechanisms of biologi...

Dear Andrei Nikonov,

You wrote: “I think that there can be no good answer to a question starting "Do you believe..." It is clear that scientifically this question is not testable.”

Unfortunately, you are mistaken.

Really, just the disbelieves in the adequacy of the widely distributed notions of the natural phenomena and processes are the propulsive agent in the cognition of their true mechanisms and causal relationships. The fact of the matter is that the notions that seemed undeniable in the past are archaic and naive today and we know nothing about opinions of our descendants about our today notions of the world outlook.

To err is human. K. Popper proved that our knowledge of the Nature changes not progressively and even not through a spiral motion but through trials and errors, “…science is fallible, because science is human” (K. R. Popper, The open society and its enemies, vol. II, Addendum. UK (1980) 369–396). The cause of this consists in the fact that our notions of the Nature development are based on the calculations, observations, and reasonings, but the calculations are, on frequent occasions, approximate, based on unproven initial conditions, and may be ambiguous, the observational results depend on the instrumentation, measuring techniques and processing, consideration of ambient conditions, and interpretation of observational data, and reasonings depend on author’s mental outlook, his experience, etc., etc. And just the disbelief in the initial conditions, calculation methods and data interpretation, experimental and observational techniques and procedures, and logical constructions applied by authors of the earlier works stimulates new researchers to new advanced studies of old problems.

If any person believes in correctness of the questionable solution of any problem, he will never modify this solution.

As for Darwin’s species diversity hypothesis, there is rather voluminous scientific literature that contradicts it; paleontological studies testify against it, and our Life Origination Hydrate Theory (LOH-Theory) gives the new approach to this problem (see my and Elena Kadyshevich pages at the ResearchGate side).

To me, the most convincing evidence that all life originated from one ancestor is that the basic biochemistry of all organisms uses a common set of  molecules--DNA for information storage, mRNA to translate DNA into proteins, ATP for energy transfer from metabolic pathways to many energy consuming cell functions, etc. Perhaps in the beginning, basic biochemistry was more diverse, but the ancestor using this metabolism out-competed them.  I suppose that diverse ancestor metabolisms converged on these common molecules because they are the most efficient ones for the role. But, given the astronomical number of carbon based chemicals possible it would be a bit surprising if multiple efficient metabolisms were not possible.

Dear Dr. Peter J. Richerson,

I think that you will agree with me that the process of life origination, this is the physical and chemical problem; not the biological one, because that was the time when no biota existed, and not the philosophical one.

I also don’t doubt that you know well that just the DNA molecules are necessary for living organisms to appear and develop. Meanwhile, any DNA, this is the chemical substance of an extremely specific chemical structure and composition. Such substances can be synthesized under very unique conditions, and they cannot be synthesized accidentally. To understand the synthesis of such substances, it is necessary to reveal the conditions at which all chemical features of DNAs could be realized. It is necessary to be a chemist and a physicist to understand that the specific complex of conditions, which is necessary for such a synthesis, should provide synthesis of N-bases of the definite structure and prevent the subsequent chemical transformations of these N-bases, should provide the regularity of arrangement of N-bases in the structure, should provide formation of nucleosides and their joining into a polymer molecule by just phosphodiester radicals and by no other, etc. Only a mineral matrix is capable of providing all these conditions, and the nature knows only one such a matrix; this is the gas-hydrate matrix. And only one gas hydrate, namely, methane-hydrate is capable of doing this work; therewith, a methane-hydrate deposit is capable of forming a multitude of DNA molecules similar but somewhat differing from each other. I have no possibility to write here the details of this problem, but I advise you to read one of our papers, e.g., the one published in Global Journal of Science Frontier Research, and I hope that, after that, you will understand the deficiency of your reasoning. May be, this paper will be rather difficult for you, but I hope you will agree with me that the problem of living matter origination is also difficult and it is worth the efforts. This paper is available in my page of the ResearchGate site; there, you will see about two tens of my paper on this problem and many other our papers, but I advise you just this paper (the last our paper published in J. Molec. Evolution is still more informative, but its cost is about $40 at the Springer site).

Sincerely,

Victor Ostrovskii

Dear Andrei,

Being a student, you should know that it is insufficient to read the last paragraphs of handbooks or scientific papers to know their contents and to widen your knowledge in their fields. By reading the last paragraphs only, you will be able to perceive neither mathematics, nor physics, nor biology, but you will get the possibility for putting hundreds of questions at the ReasearchGate site to the authors of these books and papers. The handbooks and papers exist not only for putting questions but also for thinking and getting answers through reading and thinking. If you had read the last paragraph of our paper, this means that you have this paper in your hands. So, read it from the beginning to the end and, apparently, you will have the answer to your question.

Let me give one more remark to your issue. I think you would not like if anybody would name you Nikon, and, please, name my coauthor by using her real family name.

For Andrei

At present, from the ResearchGate site, you can download our papers published in Global J. …, Life, Thermochim. Acta, J. Therm. Anal. Calorim., etc.

As for the paper published in the J. Mol. Evol., the permission for its uploading at the ResearchGate site can be given by Springer only.

Having your e-mail address, I could send you its pre-print version for the personal use only.

For Andrei, 

Send me your e-mail address, and, after that, I will send you the paper.

I have the following Warning from Springer:

“Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media New York. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: “The final publication is available at link.springer.com”.”

I understand this Warning in such a way that I have no right for uncontrolled dissemination of the paper.

In addition, you wrote me that you had read its last paragraph. As I understand, you have the paper in your hands, because you could read its last paragraph in the full paper text only. As I know, only two initial pages are available for free at the Springer site. Please, explain why you cannot read the paper in full where you had read its last paragraph. 

As people have pointed out, this question is rather a personal than a scientific one.

Personally: Yes. I do.

Because evolutionary theory explains beautifully how it happens, how the algorithm works, that produces diversity once inheritable information is around, under any circumstances.

btw: The numbers of species you cited: what exactly do you mean by "species"? Because the exact definition matters in this case.

I am reminded of various old sayings about people walking and talking after their heads had been cut off: "it is the first steps that are astonishing, not the distance walked" I am pretty ignorant about questions relating to the origin of life, but once you have your DNA, genetic code etc, there is no problem about the number of species you generate, especially given a time span of a couple of billion years. The numbers here don't matter, while how it got started is still unknown (at least to me)

Dear Robert A D Cameron, Dear All,

Allow me to tell about my views on the importance of the living-matter origination understanding.  

I believe that the adequate solution of this problem is important by no means only as such, but as a key to solutions of the problems of our today life. The fact of the matter is that the physicochemical laws that govern the vital activity of all organisms should be in a close relationship with the laws that governed the origination of the first living issues. Indeed, each act of replication (duplication) of any living cell should be, to a large extent, similar to the act of the birth of the primary cells. This means that the understanding of the mechanism of the birth of the first cells should help us to understand the physicochemical mechanism of the living-cell functioning. The understanding of the life of any one cell is much simpler than understanding of the life of multi-cellular organisms but this understanding help to understand the laws of the life of the organisms as whole.

Please, pay your attention to the fact that we formulated the mechanism of functioning of multicellular organisms (the MRH Hypothesis, Hydrate Hypothesis of Mitosis and Replication) on the basis of our understanding of the living matter origination. May be, you believe that you can live well without this theory as well. But, may be, you would be mistaken in this case.

The fact is that, we used the two previous theories to formulate a new approach to the problems of optimal nutrition and life prolongation. And it is unlikely that such problems are uninteresting for you the more so because it is possible that these new approach after its development will allow to fight against some diseases. Today, we formulated the approaches only to the problem, but we hope to develop them if we are fated to do this.

These new ideas require the time and the experiments, but they open a new way for the researchers to the possible solution of different problems, because they relate not only to the quality of optimal nutrition for any one biological species but also to creation of nutrition from minerals for different organisms. Meanwhile, the plants and animals are also living organisms, and they transform the minerals to the nutrition for each other and for people. Therefore, knowing the scientifically grounded modes of nutrition optimazation and life prolongation, people would be capable of governing these processes in their own interests and in the interest of the Earth’s nature in the whole.

Sincerely.

Dear All -

As one whose research was mentioned in this thread, and as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal article that was also mentioned (J. Molecular Evolution), I thought I should mention two things here. First, there should be no problem if the author of the JME paper (Dr. Ostrovskii) emails a personal pdf copy to any other interested party so long as it is indeed for personal use and not further distributed or has its copyright infringed. Of course I encourage the sharing of published ideas so long as copyright laws are upheld. Second, in reference to Dr. Ostrovskii's original query, I am not certain I understand fully the question. Clearly we are now in a good position to make reasonably accurate "best-guess" descriptions of how life originated and subsequently speciated. Thoughtful theories on this issue, such as the LOH-Theory of Drs. Ostrovskii and Kadyshevich (the subject of the recent JME paper), help us constantly refine and improve our understanding of these key phenomena. But until we have access to a time machine, we will never "know" or "prove" exactly what did happen 3-4 Gya. For this reason I tend to stay out of arguments such as this. Nevertheless, the problem of the origins of life is a very important one, and I will continue to be fascinated by it.

Niles Lehman

Dear Niles Lehman, ( for all dear members as well)

Thank you for your kind attention to our paper and to the intriguing problem of living-matter origination and for the elucidation of our right to distribution of the e-offprints of the paper.

With that, I would like to write something about your opinion that “… until we have access to a time machine, we will never "know" or "prove" exactly what did happen 3-4 Gya”.

There are many real events, about which some persons think that they are not proved and even that they never existed. For example, there is an opinion that no US persons were on the Moon. If you import from there the cigarette case forgotten there, for example, by Armstrong they will say that this is falsification and will not believe you. To believe and to disbelieve consciously, it is necessary to know the natural laws, to be observant, and to know the laws of the logical thinking. Therewith, these three things are necessary all together. One or two of them is insufficient. For example, people had observed for thousands of years that the Sun moves through the dome of the sky and they were sure that it loops the Earth. But all they were mistaken. Once, a man said them that they were mistaken, because this man knew some natural laws and the laws of thinking but not only was able to observe. Put two pieces of polished malachite from Somali and from Russian Ural at the table and look at them attentively. The designs of their faces are the same (!), almost (!) the same. Why are they the same? They are the same because of the occurrence of the phenomenon of thermodynamic front, and because of the occurrence of the phenomenon of kinetic delay. Some appropriate minerals were under appropriate conditions. The thermodynamic front determined the direction of the chemical reactions, and the kinetics determined the product state at which the reactions delayed. Why are they only almost the same? It is because the conditions were similar, but were not identical. Put a polished plate of Persian noble opal and a polished plate of Australian noble opal before you. They are indiscernible to the unaided eye, because the phenomena of thermodynamic front and of kinetic delay exist. Geology and chemistry know a multitude of such examples; moreover, chemists studied these phenomena and do artificial stones which are almost indistinguishable from the natural ones.

The discovery of DNAs and of their role in the development of living matter is one of the most remarkable discoveries of the 20th century. The biochemists are capable today of changing the successions of N-bases in DNAs and thus of changing the definite organs of complicated organisms that grow on the basis of these modified DNAs. Apparently, there are no doubts that just the DNAs represent the basis of life and that just the creation of DNAs by Nature (or by G-d, as somebody believe) marked the start of living matter development. According to our theory (PFO-CFO Hypothesis of Solar System Formation), everything that was created before living matter, was created from the space that is not the empty but the mass/energy of a low potential. 

Thus, the central question of the problem of living matter origination is just the DNA origination. When knowing its chemical and geometrical structure, I believe that it is possible to state with confidence that it could be formed only within a mineral matrix and I think that we proved that there is only one mineral matrix within which DNAs could be formed and that there is only one triad of natural substances from which it could be formed. On this basis, we explained the cause of monochirality that was a riddle for many decades and answered a number of side questions.

I know nothing about the time machine, but I know that, as a result of the thermodynamic directedness of natural phenomena, researchers are principally capable of mental doubling back the way the nature went and, thus, of revealing the main milestones in Nature’s movement. Indeed, it is necessary to study the grounds of different sciences such as chemistry, physics, biology, geology, thermodynamics, kinetics, logics, etc., but it is possible to do this. A naturalist must search for a “hook” in the environment in order to catch on it and, having the thermodynamic laws as the guiding thread, to guess the logics used by Nature in its development.

For about 15 years, we made three discoveries described in J. Mol. Evol.and in the last presentation that is downloaded in the ResearchGate, and in other our publications; we found these hooks and I think that we guessed the riddle of DNA origination. To err is human. One of the reviewers found one mistake in my logic. I am grateful to him. I corrected that mistake. I would be grateful if anybody would show me any mistake in the scientific grounds of our papers or in our logic; we would try to correct it. 

Sincerely

To Andrei Nikonov

Andrei,

I was glad to know that you submitted your thesis in June, 2014. My congratulations! Unfortunately, I didn't know about this and, therefore, I called you student in my previous issue. I am sorry. I hope to see at the RG not four but, at least, forty your papers and I will observe with an interest for the progress in your scientific opinions. As I know about your interest to the problem of life origination, allow me to suggest you the last presentation from me and E. Kadyshevich that is downloaded at the RG site (this is my invited talk given at the European Planetary Science Congress, 2014). As for your request to send you our paper published in the J. Mol. Evol., I am waiting for your e-mail address to do this.

yes

Our article published in peer-reviewed Journal "Communicative & Integrative Biology". A few major points discussed in the paper:

(1) Brain is not the source of consciousness.

(2) Consciousness is ubiquitous in all living organisms, starting from bacteria to human beings.

(3) The individual cells in the multicellular organisms are also individually cognitive entities.

(4) Proposals like “artificial life”, “artificial intelligence”, “sentient machines” and so on are only fairytales because no designer can produce an artifact with the properties like internal teleology (Naturzweck) and formative force (bildende Kraft).

(5) The material origin of life and objective evolution are only misconceptions that biologists must overcome.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2015.1085138

Well generally I would tend to say: Yes, I do. But then again, this would strictly, from my recent understanding, only apply for the eukaryotic part of the tree of life. A couple of years back, I attended a lecture on the publication by Wächtershäuser, and it made me think whether the original procaryotic root of the tree of life could actually be more complex and network-like, originating from a multitude of sources.

I have not yet read your paper, and I am greatly looking forward to do so, but allow me the question, whether you know of this publication, and what is your opinion on its general basic conceptions?

Wächtershäuser G. From volcanic origins of chemoautotrophic life to Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. Phil Trans R Soc B. 2006;361:1787–808.

Apart from technicalities on the likelihood of different reaction kinetics and - mechanisms, it appears to me that, given the multitude of proposals, a multi-origin root for the tree of life seems increasingly plausible, and I don´t really see strong reason, why a Darwinian like myself should not believe in it, as the basic principle of darwinian theory is differential propagation via selection on variation in a population of information-containing entities, and it seems to me, one needs such a population to get any evolutionary history started in the first place, doesn´t it?

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you again for introducing this question and the various most interesting answers.  However, using the word "believe" seems somewhat inappropriate here. I rather prefer the word "convinced", in connection with the availability of objective observations.

As primatologists with a focus on functional morphology, we are constantly puzzled by the endless complexities of e.g., the comparative musculoskeletal anatomy in various species. Meanwhile, the attached paper on Fractal Life may bring some comfort here ?

Often, isms are simplisms while theories can also be considered as working hypotheses

With kind regards,

Koos Jaap van Zwieten

The human DNA existed before the earth scenario and evolutionary chaos appears also as an important mechanism. The following article not only for mankind, but life in general, exhibits how under certain general and similar limits, there are infinite possible variations through a selection process that it is no Darwinian natural selection or evolution. Many different evolutionary trajectories from innumerable combinations of basic elements occur from the micro to the macroscopic scale.

Article Evolution through the stochastic dyadic Cantor Set: the uniq...

I agree that the probability of Darwinian scenario of evolution is vanishingly

small. We need new theory of evolution with apriori information on future possible species.

For those like Dr. Melkikh who are worried about the combinatoric explosion problem with organic evolution Andreas Wagner at the University of Vienna has a series of well cited papers on the issue. The gist of it is that if evolution had to search for narrow peaks in the universe of all possible gene sequences, all possible metabolic pathways, and the like it indeed couldn't function. But, in fact, in the neighborhood of an existing enzyme there are typically several variants that are equally functional one amino acid change away. Two or three amino acid changes away there is typically an enzyme which still works well on the original substrate but also has some activity on a new, generally chemically similar, substrate. The same for metabolic and developmental pathways. Thus, populations carry a reservoir of neutral or near neutral variants some of which can be favored by selection when environments change. This means that the problem of finding new adaptations is, by his calculations, reduced from an impossible search to a quite feasible one. Aside from many quite techy papers he has a quite accessible book.

Wagner, A. (2014). Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle: Penguin.

Of course I know about Wagner's work, but such a mechanism does not work by itself, it implies the existence of a priori information in the system.

See, for example

Melkikh A.V., Paradoxes of early stages of evolution of life and biological complexity. Origin of life and evolution of biospheres. 2015. V.45. issue 1. 163-171.

Dear Alexey V Melkikh. 

I call you to read our together with Elena Kadyshevich papers with description of the Life Origination Hydrate Theory (LOH Theory). These papers are available in my and Elena Kadyshevicn pages of the ResearchGate site. If you are interested in just the Darvinian hypothesis, this problem is considered in our paper published recently in the Journal of Molecular Evolution. The  LOH-Theory gives a new approach to this problem. This paper contains a great number of .references to other our papers in English and Russian, where the LOH-Theory is developed. In 2015, after the paper published in the JME, we also published in the journal "Сhirality" a paper, where the problem of chirality of organic substances obtained its simple and realistic explanation (by the example of aminoacids). 

Dear Viktor,

You are considering only two hypothesis: yours and Darwin's. I had the honor to meet Pobisk Kuznetsov, Russian engineer and philosopher, who believed that live is an attribute of Universe and as old as Universe itself. Actually, this idea is not against your hypothesis, but it gives mush more time for living organisms to reach the high level of organization that we do currently observe.

Regards

Alex

Dear Alex, 

First, thank you for your issue. Second, as for the merits of case, life is a complicated physico-chemical phenomenon and, for its origination, definite chemical elements, definite ambient conditions, and some time are necessary. I think that these points should be taken into account.  Meanwhile, it is possible that life originated on the Earth before 3.9 MYA.