Another way to approach this discussion concept, is to look back at why abiogenesis was put forward. It didn’t come from nowhere, and it wasn’t a plot by anti-religion scientists to fool people into leaving churches.
It is the logical deduction from the existing understandings that 1) all of the known world around us appears to be made of recognizable “stuff,” none of which shows signs of life when in isolation; and 2) that everything that exists today, can be explained by mechanical changes taking place over a very long time in the mix of the “stuff.”
Hence “disproving” the “life from lifelessness” idea can be most directly accomplished by showing either that life exists in the absence of “stuff,” or that everything deemed to be alive, contains something other than all the “stuff.”
By the way, I still can’t find any authoritative support for there being a universally agreed upon rule that anything not “falsifiable” is “unscientific.” Only that the philosophical concept of using “falsifiability” as a PART OF testing whether something is pseudoscience or simple opinion is generally appreciated by many scientists. In fact, many of the descriptions of this concept specifically state that there are many accepted scientific theories which are not currently “falsifiable.”
I think that “falsifiable” is a very useful scientific tool, much like a “repeatable” experiment. But they necessarily can’t be the be all and end all. If we manage to measure the gravity waves made by the explosion of a near by star, can we call that repeatable in a realistic sense?
I’m not convinced it’s all that useful. In so far as it is, it apparently amounts to no more than saying that something has observable characteristics or effects. If it does, it can in principle be falsified by a consistent failure to observe any of those where predicted. If not, it is indistinguishable from the non-existent.
In my experience, it’s usually only used by someone wanting to claim that something which is manifestly real, cannot be real, because it isn’t “falsifiable”. It’s seemingly always used in respect to some aspect of a naturalistic worldview which the person feels is properly reserved for a magical explanation. A disingenuous attempt to drag the observable, and the observed, down to equivalence with any and all superstitious guesswork. Nobody ever asks if it is possible to falsify the claim that there really was a time before last weekend, because it is not, and yet there was.
Repeatability, in the example you give, would be demonstrated by multiple independent observers taking measurements at the same time. If it’s truly a one-off phenomenon, and only one team observes it, then no, it’s not repeatable and the data is consequently less scientifically valuable. The only information we can reliably infer is that the instruments recorded whatever data they did on that specific occasion. In the case of gravitational waves from an exploding star, we would have to wait for waves from another such explosion to be observed.
Well maybe because most of your experience is arguing about it on the internet? Creating a model so that you can make predictions and then experimenting to see if your model holds sounds pretty useful to me.
Abiogenesis is a interesting hypothesis which is quite possible correct. So is Panspermia. But my money is on Abiogenesis. Just that it* is* a hypothesis not a Theory.
Even though you are now banned, I think I know what you are asking and where your misconception is.
Yes, falsifiability is a term in the Popperian philosophy of science. That philosophy, as you have seen in this thread, is not as widespread or as supported as you may think.
It still means something. For example, to “falsify” evolution, one would have to show that lifeforms do not change at all across generations. In fact, lifeforms do change, and we have many, many lines of evidence that point to that fact. Which means evolution has not been falsified on that front. But at least hypothetically, evolution can be(or could have been) disproven.
That is an essential aspect of science that sets it apart from, say, pseudoscience, where “it just doesn’t work when you test it, the spirits who granted me those powers don’t like being investigated” seems to be the get out of jail free card for a lot of charlatans.
Abiogenesis is not really science, as you have hinted at. It’s just a word. It’s a word that means “there wasn’t life, and now there is, and that exact point where life came from non-living things (as opposed to all the life that came after, which was descended from other living things), is called ‘abiogenesis’”.
So far this word is basically a placeholder for processes that scientists think must have happened at some point. If we discover what those processes are, we will probably use that name instead of the placeholder we currently use. Sort of like “dark matter”.
Nevertheless, unlike creationism, abiogenesis may become science. And when it does, here’s an easy way to falsify it: Show that life has always existed. Because “abiogenesis” means “there wasn’t life, and now there is”, to falsify it you would have to show that life has always existed, from the present backwards for all eternity. But you can’t do that, because even our universe had a beginning, which means that so did life. Perhaps life has existed for all eternity in some other universe, but not this one. The fact that life arose at some point and hasn’t always existed means that it came from non-living things. The word for life coming from non-living things is “abiogenesis”.
‘To falsify’ and ‘is falsifiable’ are not the same. Looking for a way to falsify abiogenesis implies that it is falsifiable. Not having the means to falsify it doesn’t mean it isn’t falsifiable. I don’t think anyone but the OP has trouble with the distinction.
Not quite. Abiogenesis per wiki is “is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds”. And in general is such a process for the origin for Life on Earth (that’s how the Panspermia hypothesis is a competing hypothesis vs Abiogenesis.
Life could have always existed.
Like could have been created by Supernatural means.:dubious:
and Life could have originated elsewhere and traveled here (which does beg the question of the* original* origin of Life, true)
There is no real evidence for Abiogenesis . There have been some intriguing experiments which show that several of the steps in Abiogenesis are possible.
Supernatural: No evidence at all.
Always existed: Well, we keep finding evidence of Life earlier and earlier.
Supernatural: Apparently meaningless. Define “supernatural” and we can start to discuss the possibility. Science does not consider supernatural explanations. Theology, mysticism etc. do, which is why they are of no use in answering factual questions.
Always existed: Falsified by any reasonable standards. The observable universe was at one point dominated by super-hot plasma. If there was life prior to this, or in some other region, it is unrelated to life on Earth which therefore represents a separate genesis.
Panspermia: Defers the question. Still implies abiogenesis, only elsewhere.
Deliberate design by extra-terrestrial being/s: Defers the question. Where did the designer/s come from?
How impossible is it that there could be more than one origin? Like say mitochondria developed through a different process than a basic bacteria? My basic thought was that is unlikely as it still uses a similar DNA structure but what the he’ll do I know?
My understanding is that as far as we can tell, the letters of the DNA code are arbitrary but fixed. You can change the combinations, but if you change the code itself, it will cause catastrophic changes to the organism. Like how you can change individual words or letters in a book and still have a good chance that it will make sense, whereas if you change the alphabet around, the whole thing will become gibberish.
If it truly is arbitrary, then the likelihood is that all extant life on Earth shares a common ancestor, and that if there was any second genesis it has no living descendants. Certainly if we found an organism with a completely different genetic code, it would be good evidence of a second genesis.
