A Brief History of Creation

by Bill Mesler

  120 In Pasteur’s later years: The importance Pasteur placed on spontaneous generation is corroborated in Debré’s Louis Pasteur.

  122 When Lamarck died penniless and nearly blind: Cuvier, G. “Biographical Memoir of M. de Lamarck,” 1.

  123 To a friend, Goethe likened the debate: Appel, Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate, 1.

  124 The reason for the phenomenon: The origin of homochirality is still a topic of scientific debate. The best guess to date is that in order for large molecules like proteins or nucleic acids to function properly, homochirality is necessary. The initial bias toward one or the other may have been inherited from the pre-solar-system outer-space environment, where circularly polarized light from neutron stars and supernovas selectively formed one or the other orientation of the molecule. Homochirality should not be confused with the distinction between organic and nonorganic molecules. Organic molecules can be homochiral, but they don’t need to be.

  125 Soon, his wife was writing her father: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 87.

  126 Pasteur wrote to a colleague: Ibid., 150.

  127 Darwin, who knew nothing of Royer: Prum, “Charles Darwin’s First French Translations,” 392.

  128 In their judgment, they wrote: Geison, Private Science of Louis Pasteur, 125.

  129 One, the anatomist Thomas Huxley: Jensen, “X Club,” 64.

  130 That night, they decided to form: Ibid.

  131 It was held at Oxford: Desmond and Moore, Darwin, 493.

  135 In a letter to Wallace: Peretó, Bada, and Lazcano, “Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life,” 398.

  137 From the south of France: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 179.

  141 “We are told, indeed”: Brieger, Medical America, 286.

  143 “Do you know why it is so important”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 300.

  143 In a vicious review of The Beginnings of Life: Strick, Sparks of Life, 101.

  144 “To our mind the position is quite unchanged”: “Origin of Life,” Lancet, 970.

  145 “Though no evidence worth anything”: F. Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, 171.

  Chapter 8

  JBS: The Life and Work of JBS Haldane, by Ronald Clark, is a marvelous biography of a colorful figure whose significance has largely been forgotten. Biographical material on Alexander Oparin is harder to come by. William Schopf includes a nice firsthand portrait of the Russian scientist in Cradle of Life. Loren Graham’s works on Soviet science (Science in Russia and the Soviet Union and Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union) continue to stand out as the most authoritative record of that sad period in Russian history.

  147 A Scottish geologist by the name of James Hutton: Dean, James Hutton and the History of Geology, 262.

  148 “Though speculations concerning”: “British Association—Leicester Meeting,” 135.

  149 “Those who lived in close contact with him”: Clark, JBS, 45.

  150 After injuring his forehead: Ibid., 13.

  151 They were exceedingly unpredictable: Ibid., 36.

  151 He later recalled that he “thought it important”: Ibid., 37.

  151 Sir Douglas Haig, commander: Ibid.

  153 Haldane’s admirer Arthur C. Clarke: Clarke, Foreword to What I Require from Life, ix.

  153 Either an act of abiogenesis: Haldane, “The Origin of Life,” 6.

  154 On the seventy-fifth anniversary: Hyman and Brangwynne, “In Retrospect,” 524.

  156 Later, when he became a professor: Schopf, Cradle of Life, 112.

  156 Bakh found himself gradually elevated: Communist dominance of Russian scientific institutions was not as quick as one might imagine. It would be a number of years until those institutions came under the kind of totalitarian control that characterized the Stalinist period. Not until 1929 did the Russian Academy of Sciences admit its first communists, a group that included Bakh and Oparin.

  158 Kelvin postulated that the Earth: A deeper elaboration of Kelvin’s methods can be found in “Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth,” by Philip C. England, Peter Molnar, and Frank Richter.

  158 By 1897, he had settled on: Kelvin, Mathematical and Physical Papers, 5:215.

  161 “If the theory [evolution] be true”: Schopf, Cradle of Life, 15.

  163 In 1891, Walcott wrote: Walcott, “Pre-Cambrian Rocks,” 594.

  167 The son of an illiterate peasant farmer: The Pravda article and much of the biographical information can be found in Zhores Medvedev’s The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko.

  167 “If one is to judge a man”: Medvedev, Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko, 11.

  169 “If you had been there during those years”: Graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union, p. 276.

  169 “Sixty years in socks is enough”: DeJong-Lambert, Cold War Politics of Genetic Research, 150.

  170 He went on to say: Clark, JBS, 294.

  170 “I suppose that Oparin and I”: Ibid., 286.

  Chapter 9

  Detailed biographical treatments of many of the characters in this chapter, including Harold Urey, Stanley Miller, and Sidney Fox, can be found in a series of books entitled Men of Space. The series was authored in the 1960s by a former Hollywood actress and personality named Shirley Thomas, billed on the book jackets as “The First Lady of Space.” James Strick’s article “Creating a Cosmic Discipline,” from the Journal of the History of Biology, is an excellent account of the events leading to the establishment of NASA’s exobiology program, as well as the program’s early years.

  173 “If God did not do it this way”: Bada and Lazcano, “Stanley Miller’s 70th Birthday,” 109.

  174 In 1952, Teller left Chicago: In 1946, Teller became the first scientist to conceive of an atomic bomb that used hydrogen fusion to magnify its destructive power. After the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic bomb in 1949, President Truman had started to steer money into research for Teller’s weapon—what would come to be called the hydrogen bomb. The project initially met a lot of resistance from other nuclear scientists, who questioned Teller’s assumptions. By 1952, however, advances in the understanding of nuclear physics had changed many minds in the scientific community. There were also concerns in the intelligence community that the Soviets were working on their own version of such a bomb, and the Defense Department wanted to jump-start its program. Teller took charge of the secret weapon project at the University of California’s Radiation Laboratory at Lawrence Livermore. Soon he was named director of the US primary nuclear weapons development facility at Los Alamos. By the end of 1952, the United States had tested its first nuclear weapon based on Teller’s design. A year later, the Soviets tested their own hydrogen bomb.

  175 Calvin was one of the world’s greatest authorities: Of all the metabolic functions of living organisms, photosynthesis is one of the most complex. Looking backward from a modern evolutionary vantage point, it’s easy to see plants, bereft of nervous systems, as less “advanced” than animals. This was the view held by early evolutionists like Huxley, who thought the first organisms were likely some form of plantlike life akin to algae. Coming from a background in plant biology, Alexander Oparin saw it the opposite way. Fermenting microbes were the more basic organisms and must have appeared first. Plants, with their sophisticated ability to absorb energy from the sun, were more complex and must have evolved later. Oparin’s view has come to be generally accepted in the scientific community.

  179 An editorial in the New York Times: “Life and a Glass Earth,” New York Times.

  179 Time magazine reported: “Science: Semi-Creation,” Time.

  180 Urey told Miller he had to make up his own mind: Lazcano and Bada, “Stanley L. Miller (1930–2007),” 379.

  182 After the results of the Miller-Urey experiment: Schopf, Cradle of Life, 127.

  182 Later in the winter of 1957: Lederberg recounted his meeting with Haldane in Calcutta in great detail in an article he wrote for the Journal of Genetics entitled “Sputnik + 30.”

  184 As Carl Sagan later wrote: Stric
k, “Creating a Cosmic Discipline,” 135.

  Chapter 10

  A Man on the Moon, by Andrew Chaikin, stands out as the finest account of the Apollo missions. Mathew Ridley’s Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code is an excellent account of how the genetic machinery of living cells was elaborated. Ridley’s popular book Genome also delves into the discoveries that paved the way for what would become a monumental advance in our understanding of biology.

  188 “The surface appears to be”: Chaikin, Man on the Moon, 208.

  189 Aldrin called it “magnificent desolation”: Ibid., 211.

  190 An elaborate quarantine center: Gary McCollum and Donald Bogard’s interview for NASA’s oral history project goes into the precautions at length.

  192 “You are going to make a choice”: “Fox,” Mobile Register.

  193 As Fox would later write: S. W. Fox, “Apollo Program and Amino Acids,” 46.

  193 He was looking for clues: Ibid.

  197 “Fox, all the problems of life”: Strick, “Creating a Cosmic Discipline,” 154.

  197 He returned to California: “Sidney W. Fox,” Los Angeles Times.

  198 His experiment, he claimed: S. W. Fox, Harada, and Kendrick, “Production of Spherules.”

  200 “I have never seen Francis Crick”: Watson, Double Helix, 7.

  200 And although his grandfather: Ridley, “Crick and Darwin’s Shared Publication,” 244.

  200 He was rescued from this fate: R. Alexander and Stevens, “Obituary: Francis Crick.”

  202 Joshua Lederberg would one day: Lederberg, “Transformation of Genetics by DNA.”

  202 “We have as yet no actual knowledge”: Muller, “Development of the Gene Theory,” 95–96.

  203 A blunt American with a crew cut: Watson, Double Helix.

  203 Later, in The Double Helix: Ibid., 14.

  203 “the product of an unsatisfied mother”: Watson, The Double Helix, p. 17.

  204 As early as 1927, the Soviet scientist Nikolai Koltsov: “Consequences of Political Dictatorship,” Nature Reviews. Genetics.

  204 The structure, Watson and Crick wrote: Watson and Crick, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids.”

  206 Though it carried genetic information: Ridley, Francis Crick, 171.

  Chapter 11

  Kathy Sawyer’s The Rock from Mars is a thorough telling of the story behind ALH84001, although the excitement that still surrounded the meteorite at the time her book was written has largely faded. Peter Ward’s Life as We Do Not Know It is a good scientific take on the question of life in space.

  211 She noticed that the rock: Score’s initial observations of ALH84001 can be read at http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/samples/petdes.cfm?sample=ALH84001.

  212 But the technology used: Today, the number of meteorites identified as Martian has grown to 134, including four actually observed dropping from the sky. One that fell in Egypt in 1911 was reported to have struck and killed a farmer’s unfortunate dog. Since the planets are relatively close neighbors in the solar system, it would not be surprising for Martian rocks to be common on Earth. Some scientists have estimated that half a ton of Martian rocks fall onto the Earth each year. Of all the Martian meteorites discovered to date, half have been found in the ice fields of Antarctica.

  212 In any event, over the next several years: Fry, Emergence of Life on Earth, 221.

  212 “But why, some say, the moon?”: Video and text of President Kennedy’s speech at Rice University is available at http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm.

  216 “Today Rock 84001 speaks to us”: The full text of Clinton’s statement is available at http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/clinton.html.

  216 “We must regard it as probable”: Kelvin, “Presidential Address,” 202.

  217 The clamor of interest: In 1965, a different sample of Orgueil was found to have been tampered with. In 1864, someone had inserted plant fragments into the rock and then used coal and glue to try to make it appear that the plant was embedded in the meteorite. Rather than a hoax to create the impression of extraterrestrial life, historians believe the tampering was an attempt to undercut Pasteur’s work on disproving spontaneous generation.

  217 In 1962, they reported their findings: Nagy, Claus, and Hennessy, “Organic Particles Embedded in Minerals.”

  218 Urey, ever the open-minded skeptic: The controversy about Orgueil has never really gone away. Since 2000, former NASA engineer Richard Hoover has published a number of papers claiming microscope-image evidence of life in the form of tiny bacterium-like structures in the Orgueil and other carbonaceous meteorites. The last of these articles was published in 2011 in the Journal of Cosmology. The claims have been met with a variety of criticisms by the scientific community and produced some blowback for NASA. The agency had not endorsed Hoover’s work, though it was widely reported to have done so. James Randi, the popular debunker of all things paranormal and pseudo-scientific, subsequently awarded Hoover and the Journal of Cosmology his not-so-coveted “Pigasus Award” in the category of “Scientist” (Plait, “2011 JREF Pigasus Awards”).

  218 “The study of carbonaceous meteorites”: Nagy and Lynch, “Life-like Forms in Meteorites,” 606.

  219 He had his doubts about specific claims: Gould, Stephen, “Life on Mars? So What?” New York Times, August 11, 1996.

  221 After two years of review: Kerr, R. “Requiem for Life on Mars?”

  Chapter 12

  The New Foundations of Evolution, by Jan Sapp, is a detailed history of the modern study of microbial evolution, and contains a thorough account of Carl Woese’s discovery of the archaea.

  229 “By deducing rather ancient ancestor sequences”: Letter from Carl Woese to Francis Crick, June 24, 1969, copy provided by George Fox.

  232 “The archaea are related to us”: Bult et al., “Complete Genome Sequence.”

  233 Reflecting on his dramatic vindication: Morell, “Microbiology’s Scarred Revolutionary.” Ernst Mayr remained one of the few prominent holdouts to the new tree of life, even though he and Woese had come to change places in the opinions of most scientists. Unable to bring himself to accept the finding he had so stringently opposed, Mayr died in 2005 still insisting that Woese was wrong.

  235 By swapping information freely: We now know that viruses may also play an important role in fostering evolutionary change. Traditionally, viruses have been seen as nothing more than opportunists looking for a free lunch in the form of a host in which to replicate. But when viruses move to a new host, they may bring pieces of DNA from their last host with them. Provided the host survives the infection, this DNA may become part of the host’s new genetic complement and be passed on by binary fission to its progeny. Thus, viruses may play an important role in accelerating the spread of genetic diversity.

  236 Woese called horizontal gene transfer: Woese, “Evolving Biological Organization,” 106.

  237 An organic chemist before: Wächtershäuser’s brother-in law, interestingly, is George Fox, Woese’s collaborator on the discovery of archaea. Fox introduced Wächtershäuser to Woese.

  Chapter 13

  Biographical details on Jack Szostak are drawn mostly from the autobiographical sketch he wrote for the Nobel Committee and from an interview conducted at his lab in Boston.

  242 “The first stage of evolution proceeds”: Gilbert, “RNA World.”

  245 And though, like Henry Bastian and Francis Crick: Szostak told us in an interview that if he were a young student today, with the advances in technology enabling closer study of the way the brain actually works, he would devote himself to studying the phenomenon of consciousness. He predicted that science in the twenty-first century would be dominated by the unraveling of this question.

  246 Venter and his team encoded: Angier, “Peering over the Fortress.”

  248 This made perfect sense: Spiegelman’s results raise the interesting question of why not all genomes eventually shrink down to the smallest size possible. The conditions in Spiegelman’s experiments were v
ery favorable for the survival of shorter and shorter sequences. In the real world, viral genome have to keep the information for making the polymerase and the other various proteins that enable it to infect its host; thus there is a constant tension between being able to make copies faster and at the same time keeping all of the information that is necessary to propagate both. There is therefore a size limit below which the virus would become nonfunctional and noninfectious, and thus go extinct.

  Epilogue

  253 In his famous lecture at the Sorbonne: Pasteur, “On Spontaneous Generation.”

  253 Roughly a century and a half later: Dawkins’s monologue prior to his interview of Craig Venter can be seen on YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E25jgPgmzk.

  254 “Score one for Francis”: Ridley, Francis Crick, 208.

  254 In 1996, Pope John Paul II alluded to: John Paul II, “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth.”

  257 “It is no easy matter to deal with”: Wald, “Origin of Life,” 45–46.

  Appendix

  259 Johannes van Helmont’s Recipe for Mice: Cobb, Generation, 10.

  259 Henry Bastian’s Recipes for Microbes: Bastian, Evolution and the Origin of Life.

  260 Sidney Fox’s Recipe for Proteinoid Microspheres: S. W. Fox and Harada, “Thermal Copolymerization.”

  260 Craig Venter’s Recipe for a Cell: Gibson et al., “Creation of a Bacterial Cell.”

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Acton, H. The Last Medici. London: Thames & Hudson, 1932.

  Alexander, D. R., and R. L. Numbers, eds. Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

  Alexander, R., and C. F. Stevens. “Obituary: Francis Crick (1916–2004).” Nature, 430 (2004): 845–47.

  Anderson, D. “Still Going Strong: Leeuwenhoek at Eighty.” Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 106 (2014): 3–26.

  Angier, N. “Peering over the Fortress That Is the Mighty Cell.” New York Times, May 31, 2010.

  Appel, T. The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

  Augustine. City of God, vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1958.