Thus was one more step in cosmic evolution made plausible by midcentury, even though it was a premature and optimistic idea, since only in 1995 were the first planets found around Sun-like stars, and those were gas giants like Jupiter. But …The contingency or necessity of life would be one of the great scientific and philosophical questions of cosmic evolution, but in any case the Oparin-Haldane chemical theory of origin of life provided a basis for experimentation, beginning …
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
scientist · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
J.B.S. Haldane was a polymathic biologist whose Oparin-Haldane hypothesis—proposing that life originated through chemical processes in Earth's primordial atmosphere—became foundational to mid-twentieth-century theories of abiogenesis and cosmic evolution. The readings invoke this theory as a key enabling concept for thinking about life's emergence within natural law rather than requiring external intervention, positioning it as essential background for later experimental work (like Miller's) that would test life's chemical plausibility. For a course concerned with evolution, systems, and the boundaries between living and non-living intelligence, Haldane's work bridges biological materialism with cosmological scale.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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