Abiogenesis is not, in itself, a scientific theory; it’s the process by which we believe life originated, it’s a phenomenon to be explained scientifically. The scientific theory is what describes precisely how this happened—say, the RNA-world hypothesis, for example. These theories are readily falsifiable; but asking of abiogenesis itself to be falsifiable simply betrays a complete ignorance of science.
It’s as The Other Waldo Pepper says: volcanism, not being a scientific theory, isn’t falsifiable, it’s a phenomenon explained by a scientific theory—about magmatic convection and continental drift and whatnot—which is itself readily falsifiable.
Now it’s true that we can’t directly observe abiogenesis (or haven’t, as of yet), but we can infer it from observation—there is life now, there wasn’t at some time before, so the only scientific inference (i.e. not relying on anything supernatural) is that life developed from non-life. Of course, you can then go and ask: but what if, in fact, something supernatural had to intervene? But you can do this always: even when you observe the effects of volcanism—say, magma flows and the like—and reasonably conclude to the presence of volcanic activity, it might in fact have been Hephaestus’ smithing. However, such thinking never leads to the production of viable, testable hypotheses—hence, it is useless scientifically.
Science is not a dogma and Karl Popper is not its prophet. Here you can see that scientists do not absolutize falsiability as the sole criterion in the problem of demarcation between the scientific and the unscientific.
I concur - evolution is a theory while abiogenesis remains (for now) a hypothesis, but it’s a good hypothesis in that to the best of our knowledge the necessary elements exist (a planet, inorganic compounds, injected energy from the sun or lightning) without any need to add additional as-yet-unobserved elements (Zeus, or other deity).
It’s like looking at a car, then looking at a car factory. This doesn’t prove that particular car came from that particular factory, or indeed prove that particular car came from a factory at all, but the hypothesis that the car did come from a factory is well reasoned and supported. To falsify it, you’d have to find some element in the car’s makeup that you could somehow prove could not have originated in any factory. Similarly, you’d have to discover that life on Earth contains some element that could not have naturally ever been on Earth.
Here’s a potential falsification of abiogenesis: When the DNA molecule was first isolated in 1869, years of research followed to determine its composition and structure. Suppose, hypothetically, that subjecting DNA to mass-spectrometry in 1919 revealed it contained hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus and a surprisingly massive element then unknown. This element remains a mystery until 1940, when plutonium is first synthesized. We could then reason that since plutonium is part of DNA, and (to the best of our knowledge) plutonium does not exist in nature, therefore DNA could not be produced by natural means and the abiogenesis hypothesis would be refuted.
I believe that meets the conditions specified by the OP, if meeting those conditions was ever honestly possible.
What scientific theories are predicated on abiogenesis?
Evolution does not require it; evolution begin the second that there is life and whatever precedes it is interesting, but does not change the facts regarding evolution.
One could falsify abiogenesis by demonstrating that organic material CANNOT result from inorganic material, but, as demonstrated above, we have already seen that this is not true.
Beyond that, one does not “falsify” “abiogenesis.” It is not a theory.
If one proposed the specific theory that abiogenesis occurred in a specific set of circumstances, we could look at the proposed theory and come up with a falsification.
it is like the silly notion of “falsifying” evolution. There is no single theory of evolution and the individual theories are all addressed on their own merits.
I don’t think that’s quite what I was trying to say, though. The thing is, abiogenesis—and evolution—is a phenomenon, a process, something that (we must reasonably infer) occurs (or occurred) at some point in time, somewhere out there in the world. There’s no falsifying that—the notion doesn’t make sense (at least not in the sense the word is used when it comes to falsifying a theory—of course we can be wrong about the interpretation of phenomena, but that’s a completely different issue). But as with evolution, there are several scientific theories of just exactly how this process occurs, each of which may be proven wrong individually—say, Darwinian natural selection versus the modern synthesis for evolution, RNA-world versus the clay theory for abiogenesis, and so on.
In working practice, this is one of the big ways that science advances: someone comes up with a new idea that blows all the old ideas away. Darwin wasn’t the first to see that animal species have “family tree” resemblances; he was just the first to publish a really cogent explanation of why. This knocked Lamarckianism to the mat for the long count.
The best (?) contender against abiogenesis is the notion that earth was “colonized” with life-forms from space. There’s panspermia, which suggests that space might be really rich with life (or pre-life chemicals) and ANY planet, bathing in this bio-soup, will develop life. At present, there isn’t much evidence supporting this idea.
There’s also merely kicking the can down the road, suggesting that life on earth was seeded here either deliberately or otherwise (an alien spacecraft flushed its toilet.) This merely invites the question, okay, where did their life originate.
I’m hung up on this and I’m about piled high and deep with science as you can get. I’m going to make up a noun; xylenification: the generation of xylenes from benzene. The question “how do we falsify xylenification?” doesn’t compute. There is no “theoretical falsification” for xylenification.
That could have a really easy answer: if you could “zoom out”, as it were, far enough, you could observe the shape of the time dimension that scribes out as a closed curve (circle or ellipse) – time could be an endless loop where the concept of ultimate origin is meaningless (we are our own distant ancestors).
It doesn’t work that way. I can’t prove that xylenes cannot be made from benzene (never mind that they can and are made that way.) It’s proving a negative.
The questions and statements are constructed wrong. “Xylenification is false” doesn’t make sense because it’s not something that can be true or false. “Xylenes can be made via xylenification” is at least moving in the right direction, but it doesn’t suggest any mechanism and just isn’t very interesting.
I doubt that “life on earth arose via abiogenesis” is a question that concerns many serious scientists. On the other hand, “if…abiogenesis, then A vs B vs C mechanisms” actually allows us to design some experiments and see what is most consistent with the data.
And maybe each time through the cycle, there can be changes, so we’re always improving – evolving! – and by the ultimate pass through the circle of all time, we become God!
(Looks like I picked a bad time to stop sniffing glue…)
Just to clarify. By Abiogenesis, do you mean the hypothesis that life arose on Earth by natural means, or that life arose by natural means anywhere?
If you mean the former, then you could falsify that claim by demonstrating life elsewhere in the solar system, sharing the same genetic code as that on Earth, but with a history going back further than the Earth’s.
If you mean the latter, you would have to show one of the following;
There is no life in the universe.
Magic is a thing.
Just because you can’t in practical terms falsify something, it doesn’t mean you should not accept it. I can’t falsify the existence of sandwiches, not because the existence of sandwiches is not a valid scientific hypothesis, but because the evidence which might in principle falsify it, doesn’t exist.
If living tissue had elements which were never found in non-living chemicals, or if cooking simple chemicals never resulted in more complex chemicals, then abiogenesis would be disproven. These are only two of the examples of falsifiable claims about abiogenesis.
The fact that every legitimate “disproval” has not panned out is further evidence that our current understanding of the origin of life on Earth is a strong hypothesis.
