Posts Tagged ‘evolution’

Darwin had a significant influence on Karl Marx. Struggle and survival are central to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The full title of The Origin is –

On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection and the Survival of the Fittest in the Preservation of Favoured Races.

Darwin’s premise on survival and struggle in nature paralleled Karl Marx premise on class struggle. Marx summarized the importance of “struggle” in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 -

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Germany on May 5, 1818. In 1843, Marx moved to France, but ordered to leave by the French authorities after participating in an assassination attempt on Frederick William IV, King of Prussia in 1845. After a time in Belgium and Prussia, Marx and his new comrade, Friedrich Engels, finally settled in London, England in 1849.

By the time Marx had moved to London in 1849, Darwin had already moved his young family from London to the Down seven years earlier. Even though Down is located just sixteen miles from London, ironically they never met even though Darwin greatly influenced the works of Marx and Engels.

Marx and Engels immediately recognized the significance of Darwin’s theory. Within weeks of the publication of The Origin of Species in November 1859, Engels wrote to Marx -

“Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done…. One does, of course, have to put up with the crude English method.”

Marx wrote back to Engels on December 19, 1860 -

“This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”

The Origin of Species became the natural cause basis for Marx’s emerging class struggle movement. In a letter to comrade Ferdinand Lassalle, on January 16, 1861, Marx wrote -

“Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.”

Marx inscribed “sincere admirer” in Darwin’s copy of Marx’s first volume of Das Kapital in 1867. The importance of the theory of evolution for Communism was critical. In Das Kapital, Marx wrote –

“Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature’s Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention?”

To acknowledge Darwin’s influence, Marx asked to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. However, Darwin graciously replied -

“Dear sir; I thank you for the honor that you have done me by sending me your great work on Capital and I heartily wish that I was more worthy to receive it, but understanding more of the deep and important subject of political economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of knowledge and that this in the long run is sure to add to the happiness of Mankind. I remain, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully, Charles Darwin.”

At Karl Marx’s funeral in Highgate Cemetery in London, Engels spoke at Marx’s graveside March 1883 –

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history”

The American researcher Conway Zirckle explains why the founders of Communism immediately accepted Darwin’s theory -

“Marx and Engels accepted evolution almost immediately after Darwin published The Origin of Species. Evolution, of course, was just what the founders of communism needed to explain how mankind could have come into being without the intervention of any supernatural force, and consequently it could be used to bolster the foundations of their materialistic philosophy.”

Darwin had an undeniable and profound influence on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the development of Communism. Although not intended by Darwin, the effect of the theory of evolution emerged as the single most significant social engineering movement of the twentieth century.

Speculations run wild on what the twentieth century would have looked like without the theory of evolution and Karl Marx. What’s your speculation?

Richard Dawkins, the most popular evolution advocate, explains that the mechanism of evolution is “nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions”. For Dawkins, evolution occurs through the nonrandom selection of randomly generated genetic mutations. This defines modern neo-Darwinism.

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, in their new book entitled What Darwin Got Wrong, delivers a stunning exposé on the Dawkins’s inane assertion that 1) natural selection is a logical theory, and 2) natural selection is nonrandom.

Seasoned by decades of scientific investigation, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini begin by demonstrating that even “Darwin’s theory of natural selection is fatally flawed”. Not only flawed, they view the concept of natural selection is simply an “intensional fallacy”.

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are not lone critics. With over 20 pages of references, the authors demonstrate that the theory of natural selection is no more than circular reasoning: a tautology.

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini explains: “[T]here is at the heart of adaptations theories of evolution, a confusion between (1) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and (2) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected for their adaptive traits… Darwinism is committed to inferring (2) from (1)”. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini conclude, “We think this argument, although ubiquitous in the literature, is fallacious.”

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini also address Dawkins’ issue of “nonrandom survival”, by pointing out that nonrandom processes require a mechanism to overcome entropy—randomness. The obvious question is – what is the mechanism that natural selection uses to overcome nature’s tendency towards randomness?

To answer this question, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini quotes from Gabriel Dover (2006), the British geneticist that coined the term “molecular drive”: “Selection is not a process as such with predictable outcomes based on fixed, selective ‘powers’ of individual genes controlling aspects of phenotype.”

The evidence demonstrates that natural selection does not deliver “predictable outcomes”. Lack of evidence for a predictable outcome, highlights the fact that natural selection does not have an operational mechanism to overcome randomness to increase complexity—the essence of evolution.

Despite over 150 years of investigation since the publication of The Origin of Species, no known natural law has been discovered to guarantee  natural selection as a nonrandom process. Currently, there are no known natural mechanisms to overcome the general tendency of all nature towards randomness without an intervention. Contrary to Dawkins’ assertion, natural selection is simply a random process.

What is the role of natural selection, then? For Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, “We think of natural selection as tuning the piano, not composing the melody.” This is not the nonrandom force of evolution as championed by Dawkins.  

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, like Richard Dawkins, are evolutionists and “out-right, card-carrying, sign-up, dye-in-the-wool, no-holds barred atheists.” On the subject of natural selection acting as a nonrandom agency, however, the contrasts could not be more acute. 

Consensus that natural selection cannot possibly be a nonrandom process has reached a tipping point. Mutations are random. Natural selection is random. Dawkins contention of “nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions” is now clearly emerging as simply “breathtaking inanity.”

Of all the facts in The Origin of Species, embryology was the most important in support of the theory. In a letter to Asa Gray in September 1860, Darwin wrote – “embryology is to me by far the strongest single class of facts in favor” of the theory.

Then, just two months before the release of the first edition of The Origin of Species in September 1859, Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell, “Embryology in Chapter VIII is one of my strongest points I think.”

Darwin was fascinated by embryology. Writing in his autobiography, Darwin recalls: “Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work on the Origin, as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes between the embryo and the adult animal.”

To the point, Darwin writes – “We have seen in the first chapter that the homological [similar] structure of man, his embryological development and the rudiments which he still retains, all declare in the plainest manner that he is descended from some lower form.”

Darwin along with Fritz Müller (1821–1897) and Ernest Haeckel (1834–1919) were following in the footstep of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876). Baer promoted the concept that a species’ embryological development (ontogeny) retraces the species’ entire evolutionary development (phylogeny).

In the case of man, then, the human embryo begins as a single cell and is progressively transformed into a tadpole, then to a fish, to an amphibian, to a monkey, and finally to man. In other words, at the different stages of development, the embryo is actually a series of ancestor species. The sequences of the embryo retrace the steps of evolution. Haeckel coined this process with the now-famous phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”

In the case of the appendix, then, the rise and fall of the appendix should be seen in the human embryo to demonstrate our presumed evolutionary human ancestry—from a functional to a non-functional organ. The question is does the evidence match the theory? The answer is – NO.

The reasons why the answer is NO, include  

• The appendix is not consistently found throughout the animal kingdom, occurring in only a few diverse mammals
• Not until the fifth fetal week does the appendix begin to develop
• Only after the fifth fetal month does the proximal end start differentiate into the true caecum
• Maximum growth of the appendix does not occur until after birth when the neonate takes on essential bacteria to reside in its colon
• Lymphoid follicles do not appear in the appendix until two weeks after birth at the same time that colonization of the large bowel with bacteria.

Contrary to the theory, at no point in the development of the appendix in the human embryo does arise and decline into a vestige organ. Rebecca E. Fisher, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow from the Center for Functional Anatomy & Evolution Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in a review article entitled “The primate appendix: A reassessment” concludes that “the evolutionary history of the appendix has also proven difficult to trace.”  

The evidence on the development of the appendix now clearly stands to demonstrate the utter fallacy of the long-standing “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” theory of evolution.

Jerry Coyne’s (2009) contention in Why Evolution is True that, “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use” is another clear example of deception used in the promotion evolution. The evidence is clear: the appendix is not an evolutionary leftover.

The “vestige” status of the appendix originated with Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871). In Chapter 1, Darwin writes -

“With respect to the alimentary canal I have met with an account of only a single rudiment [vestige], namely the vermiform appendage of the caecum… It appears as if, in consequence of changed diet or habits [disuse], the caecum had become much shortened in various animals, the vermiform appendage being left as a rudiment of the shortened part… Not only is it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of death”

Darwin’s concept of the appendix continued unchallenged until late in the twenteth century when clinical research began to demonstrate that not only does the appendix function to balance the bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, the appendix plays an important immunological function. 

Loren G. Martin, professor of physiology at Oklahoma State University, stated in Scientific America -

“Among adult humans, the appendix is now thought to be involved primarily in immune functions. Lymphoid tissue begins to accumulate in the appendix shortly after birth and reaches a peak between the second and third decades of life, decreasing rapidly thereafter and practically disappearing after the age of 60. During the early years of development, however, the appendix has been shown to function as a lymphoid organ, assisting with the maturation of B lymphocytes (one variety of white blood cell) and in the production of the class of antibodies known as immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies. Researchers have also shown that the appendix is involved in the production of molecules that help to direct the movement of lymphocytes to various other locations in the body.”

Martin continues noting, “the function of the appendix appears to be to expose white blood cells to the wide variety of antigens, or foreign substances, present in the gastrointestinal tract. Thus, the appendix probably helps to suppress potentially destructive humoral (blood- and lymph-borne) antibody responses while promoting local immunity. The appendix–like the tiny structures called Peyer’s patches in other areas of the gastrointestinal tract–takes up antigens from the contents of the intestines and reacts to these contents. This local immune system plays a vital role in the physiological immune response and in the control of food, drug, microbial or viral antigens.”

Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writes in his new book, Why Evolution is True that, “We humans have many vestigial features proving that we evolved. The most popular is the appendix.” Coyne claims that: “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use.”

Classifying the appendix as “no real value” exemplifies how evolution adherents persist to be woodwinked by ideology. Mounting scientific evidence continues to demonstrate why evolution is NOT true.

Long denigrated as vestigial or useless structure, the human appendix is now known to have a number of specific functions. The most widely recognized function is as a “safe house” for the beneficial bacteria living in the human gut.” There are approximately 500 species of bacteria in the gut alone—the continued presence of beneficial bacteria is essential for good health.

ScienceDaily in an article entitled “Appendix Isn’t Useless At All: It’s A Safe House For Good Bacteria,” October 8, 2007, William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of experimental surgery along with R. Randal Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University professor emeritus noted—”Our studies have indicated that the immune system protects and nourishes the colonies of microbes living in the biofilm. By protecting these good microbes, the harmful microbes have no place to locate. We have also shown that biofilms are most pronounced in the appendix and their prevalence decreases moving away from it.” One of the functions of the appendix is to serve as a microbe storehouse.

According to their study published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, the bacteria in the human gut functions to digest food and produce vitamins, like Vitamin K—essential to coagulation. In the event that bacteria in the intestines become unbalanced, or taken over by opportunistic organisms such as cholera or amoebic dysentery, the appendix functions to reboot the bacterial flora. Parker explains the mechanism: “Once the bowel contents have left the body, the good bacteria hidden away in the appendix can emerge and repopulate the lining of the intestine before more harmful bacteria can take up residence.”

“Darwin simply didn’t have access to the information we have,” explains Parker. “If Darwin had been aware of the species that have an appendix attached to a large cecum… he probably would not have thought of the appendix as a vestige of evolution.”

When Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writing in his book, Why Evolution is True that “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use,” excluded known evidence. Continued adherence to the vestige status of the appendix by evolutionists requires rejection of the scientific method.

“Maybe it’s time to correct the textbooks,” says William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgical sciences at Duke and the senior author of the study. “Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a ‘vestigial organ.’”  

Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writes in his new book, Why Evolution is True that, “We humans have many vestigial features proving that we evolved. The most popular is the appendix.” Coyne claims that: “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use.”

Coyne believes the expansion of appendix development occurred because of “use” followed by contraction due to “disuse”—the rise and fall of the appendix. Following this belief, one would expect to find the appendix first increasing then decreasing in our presumed human evolutionary ancestors.

The vestige logic is great; unfortunately, the evidence does not support the logic. Coyne, along with the rest of the vestiges adherents fail mention that the rise and fall theory of the appendix simply never happened. The reason: the appendix occurs only in a few diverse mammals—and does not follow an evolutionary continum of rising and falling.

In fact, the appendix, in any form, is not present in any invertebrate. Among the vertebrates, the appendix is absent in fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and, most importantly, even in only a few mammals. In fact, the appendix is only present in a few marsupials, including the wombat and South American opossum, a few rodents, including rabbits and rats, and only a few primates, only the anthropoid apes and man. Even monkeys do not have an appendix.

Even though the appendix is “critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors,” tracing the development of the rise and fall of the appendix in presumed human evolutionary ancestors is simply a mirage—nothing more.

Although the Chimpanzee, touted as our closest genetic ancestor, has an appendix, surgeons are not exploring the possibility of any type of Chimpanzee-to-human transplantation and nor is the pharmaceutical industry exploring the use of any Chimpanzee molecules for use in humans, not even insulin.

Insulin and heart valves from the Suidae, the biological family to which pigs and their relatives belong, have long been used in humans. Calcitonin, a polypeptide hormone, is identical to the Calcitonin produced in the species of the fish family known as Salmonidae—Salmon. Why are pigs and the salmon more similar to humans than our closest genetic counterpart?  

The reason is—nature is discontinuous and digital, designed as unique creations. Anatomical and molecular evidence demonstrates that nature is not the result of “slight, successive changes” via mutations as touted by evolution adherents—evidence Jerry Coyne must inconveniently ignore; a practice popularized by Charles Darwin.  

In the final paragraph of the section entitled Rudimentary, Atrophied, and Aborted Organs, Darwin writes: “Finally, the several classes of facts which have been considered in this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable species, genera and families, with which this world is peopled, are all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent, that I should without hesitation adopt this view even if it were unsupported by other facts or arguments.”

The concept of vestiges from the actions of “use and disuse” continues today even though proven to be “unsupported by other facts or arguments.” Little wonder why students continue to question whether science in the classroom today is really science. Even though touted by esteemed college professors, what may be “most popular” can be dead wrong. 

Vestiges  are tauted as evidence for biological evolution based on the Larmarckian concept of “use and disuse” that Charles Darwin reluctantly, yet fully accepted by the 6^th edition of The Origin of Species in 1872.

In the 1^st edition Darwin wrote that“use and disuse seem to have produced some effect” that was later changed to “use and disuse seem to have produced a considerable effect” in the 6^th edition. For Darwin, the importance of “use and disuse” increased from “some effect” to “considerable effect.”

In this series, we are examining the concept that the human appendix is a vestige structure through the process of “disuse.” Vestiges are thought to be biological elements that have lost their function through “disuse.” At issue is—what is the evidence that the process of “disuse” can actually produce vestiges?

In the decade following the publication of the 6^th edition, German biologist August Weismann, at the University of Freiburg, launched the first scientific inquiry to directly challenging Darwin’s theory. Now known as the “Weisman Barrier” in 1883 Weismann cut off the tails of mice from twenty-one generations. Seeing that the twenty-second generation still had tails, Weismann concluded that the evidence contradicted Darwin’s theory of “disuse” and that despite obvious reasons for change in the mice, “continuity” was observed, not new variations.

The concept of the Weismann Barrier became central to the emerging  Modern evolutionary synthesis. “Disuse” alone simply does not result in vestige structures. Ernst Mayr, known as Darwin’s bulldog of the twenty-first century, called Weismann “the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the nineteenth century, after Charles Darwin.”

Evidence from the Weismann Barrier continues to stand unchallenged, now for over 100 years. Even more to the point, after thousands of years of circumcision, “disuse” has failed to any effect on human anatomy. Without scientific experimental evidence demonstrating that “disuse” can result in any biological changes, the concept of vestige as evidence for evolution remains untenetable.

Other known vestige problems for evolution include, 1) the appendix is not found systematically found through nature, even in mammals; 2) “vestige” structures are now known to be functional. These evolutionary contradictions for vestiges continue to undermining evidence for evolution.

In the up-coming posts, we will continue to explore why these last two problems have completely undermined the concept that the human appendix is a vestige structure.

Charles Darwin attempted to avoid the use of the term “vestiges” largely because the term had been associated with the “erroneous” Larmarckian concept of “use and disuse” that was only “veritable rubbish.”

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829) was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 1788. When the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle was founded in 1793, Lamarck was appointed professor of zoology. In 1801, he published Système des animaux sans vertèbres, a major work on the classifications and coined the term invertebrates. Lamarck is thought to be the first use the term biology in its modern sense. Lamarck continued his work as a premier authority on invertebrate zoology.

Darwin did credit “Lamarck as the first man whose conclusions on the subject excited much attention.… In these works he up holds the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended from other species.”

Lamarck’s theory of evolution, which he referred to as “transformism,” was based on the idea that individuals develop new traits during their own lifetimes by “use and disuse” and transmit them to the next generation. Larmack writes – “Progress in complexity of organization exhibits anomalies here and there in the general series of animals, due to the influence of environment and of acquired habits.”

The giraffe served as Lamarck’s classic example of evolution through “use,” acquiring longer necks in successive generations in competition to reach the ever-scarcer leaves higher in the trees. In illustrating Lamarck’s views on adaptation, Darwin wrote, “To this latter agency he seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature; such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees.”

For Darwin, however, this explanation was simply not scientific – “Lamarck, who believed in an innate and inevitable tendency towards perfection in all organic beings, seems to have felt this difficulty so strongly that he was led to suppose that new and simple forms are continually being produced by spontaneous generation. Science has not as yet proved the truth of this belief.”

One of the most eminent pre-Darwinists was Charles Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802). Erasmus discussed his ideas at length in a two-volume work, Zoonomia, published in 1794. Erasmus wrote that “all … have risen from one living filament.”

Erasmus’ book was widely popular in Western Europe- even translated into German, French, and Italian. Erasmus envisioned that the driving force behind species modification was a result of “lust, hunger, and danger.” In line with Greek philosophy, Erasmus envisioned changes by “continuing to improve its own inherent activity.”

Actually how these “improvements” developed was completely unknown to Lamarck and Erasmus—evolution was a philosophy, not a science. The unknown cause of “improvements” is what drove Darwin to discover the underlying laws of nature—scientifically. Writing in the preface of The Origin of Species, Darwin suggests how Erasmus’s work, although “erroneous,” may have influenced Lamarck: “It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his Zoonomia.”

For Lamarck, new characteristics are acquired through the process of “use and disuse.” Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a Lamarckian evolutionist. Charles Darwin, however, in pursuit of a “scientific theory” of evolution, initially opposed Lamarckian evolution, only granting the theory marginal support.

In a letter written to J. D. Hooker in 1844, Darwin wrote, “Heaven forefend me from Lamarck nonsense of a ‘tendency to progression.’ … But the conclusions I am led to are not widely diff erent from his, though the means of change are wholly so.” “With respect to books on this subject,” Darwin continues, “I do not know any systematic ones, except Lamarck’s, which is veritable rubbish.”

Although attempting to distance himself from Lamarck’s concepts of “use and disuse” and “vestages,” Darwin distain for “use and disuse” eventually waned as causes for the origin of variation required for the actions of natural selection remained Darwin’s largest unsumountable enigma.

Since then, the term, “vestiges” has once again gained prominence over “rudiments,” as has Larmarckian concepts of evolution. The question remains, however, are structures classified as “vestiges” evidence of evolution? Specifically, have vestiges seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution?

To address answers to these questions, we will be examining the most popular example of vestiges—the mammalian appendix in the up-coming posts.   

Charles Darwin uses “vestiges” five times in The Origin of Species. Vestiges, since then has become synonomous with evolution. The emenent evolutionist, Douglas Futuyma, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, notes that vestigial structures make no sense without evolution. The first question is—what are vestiges?

 In this first in a series on vestiges, we will discover how structures labeled as vestiges play an important role as evidence for the theory of evolutionary. Since the most popular example of a vestige structure is the human appendix, the human appendix will be the focus structure examined in this series.

By the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, vestiges had already been a hot topic popularized by Robert Chambers’ following the publication of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844. The work brought together various ideas of stellar evolution and progressive transmutation of species. The book was a best-seller and is now seen as causing a shift in public opinion that paved the way for the general acceptance of evolution.

While agreeing with the general concept of evolution, Darwin took exception to the concept that evolution occurred by sudden changes in nature. Darwin wrote – “The author apparently believes that organisation progresses by sudden leaps, but that the effects produced by the conditions of life are gradual.”

Perhaps for these differences with Robert Chambers, Darwin even avoided defining the term “vestiges” in the The Origin of Species. In the Glossary, however, Darwin does define a related term: “RUDIMENTARY.—Very imperfectly developed.” In The Origin of Species, the term “rudimentary” appears 101 times.

Darwin envisions rudimentary structures to be the result of two different dynamics: 1) as structures “imperfectly developed”—emerging, and 2) as structures in disuse undergoing loss of function—elimination. Darwin writes – “Rudimentary organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost structures”—a Lamarckian disuse concept. Darwin explains that rudimentary structures exist because “natural selection… had no power to check deviations in their structure.”

Today however, only the elimination due to disuse concept is thought to be in operation. WIKIPEDIA.org states: “Vestigiality describes homologous characters of organisms that have seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution. Answers.com defines vestige structures, as “A rudimentary or degenerate, usually nonfunctioning, structure that is the remnant of an organ or part that was fully developed or functioning in a preceding generation or an earlier stage of development.”

The next question is – how well does the human appendix fit the vestige structure criteria? Next week we will examine the existence of the appendix throughout the animal kingdom.

In 1986, American physicist, biochemist, and molecular biology pioneer Walter Gilbert was the first to propose the term “RNA world hypothesis” for the origin of life since the possibility of Darwin’s “proteine” arrival in the “warm little pond” was beyod any realm of possibility. Gilbert suggested that because RNA can synthesize itself in the absence of proteins, RNA may have originated on the early Earth before proteins or DNA; this is known as the RNA world. According to the RNA world hypothesis, the RNA molecule later evolved into DNA and protein molecules. While the DNA molecule evolved into a data storage role, the protein molecules evolved into a catalytic role.

In 1959, Spanish Catalan biochemist Joan Oró began to synthesize adenine, a key component of RNA and DNA, from hydrogen cyanide, similar to a Miller–Urey experiment. 

Like the Miller–Urey experiment though, the lack of geological evidence for hydrogen cyanide in the fossil record is missing. Another problem with hydrogen cyanide is that at room temperature, it becomes a gas toxic to cellular metabolism. During the German Nazi regime in the mid-twentieth century, hydrogen cyanide was used as an agent for mass murder.  

To date, not one laboratory experiment with realistic early Earth elements and conditions has produced a single nucleic acid. Scripps Research Institute biochemist Gerald Joyce states that the “most reasonable interpretation is that life did not start with RNA.” The origin of life is so difficult a problem that German researcher Kaus Dose stated in 1988 that the RNA theory is “a scheme of ignorance. Without fundamentally new insights in evolutionary processes … this ignorance is likely to persist.” 

In 1998, Leslie Orgel, senior research fellow and research professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he directed the Chemical Evolution Laboratory, acknowledged that “we are very far from knowing whodunit” or what were the early environmental conditions on the Earth. 

Nearly twenty years later, the role of RNA in the origin of life remains elusive, if not improbable. In 2007, commenting in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on a paper by Phillipp Baaske and Eugene V. Koonin, senior investigator, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, stated that while more is known about RNA, the evolutionary role of RNA has severe difficulties and “still is a hypothetical entity; … the evolutionary path to the translation systems remains essentially uncharted.”