On the origin of life. An incomplete scientific story

Abstract

«The question of the origin of life is one of the fundamental problems of science.» Few would disagree with this statement by the Russian biochemist Alexander I. Oparin, pioneer in the scientific study of the transition from inanimate matter to the primitive forms of life. The naturalist and evolutionary approach to the problem of the origin of life on Earth enabled the experimental study, but it is amazingly complex, so it is impossible to tackle the issue from a single scientific discipline. Therefore, what we see is the paradigm of multidisciplinary studies, one that interests astronomers, geologists, chemists, physicists or biologists and can require observation and experimentation, as well as computational simulation and theoretical speculation. That is why, even if we do not create a comprehensive list, we should add mathematicians, computer scientists and philosophers to the army of scholars interested on the emergence of the earliest forms of life.