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The Clay Life Hypothesis |
| Section: NATURAL SCIENCE / AT THE EDGE |
| Author: Graham Cairns-Smith |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 12/1/1987 |
| Size: 3,024 Words, 18,208 Characters |
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…there should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation. Simply as a mental exercise, without any assertion that it is true, let me indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?
--Advice of Sherlock Holmes, from The Valley of Fear
The Oxford English Dictionary gives one of the meanings of clay as "the earthly or material part of man." This reflects an ancient myth, appearing in many cultures, that man was formed originally from clay. One can perhaps understand the line of thought. Clay is a commonly available material and, although formless itself, can readily have form imposed on it. A fine piece of sculpture even seems to have a kind of life in it. So perha...
. . .
...her, but by a gradual, piece-by-piece replacement of one material by the other. Once clay-based organisms had evolved the considerable techniques needed to make particular complex organic molecules consistently, then new possibilities for new "high tech" genetic materials would have appeared. From that point it might have been only a matter of time before a "genetic takeover" was complete.
(812 of 18,208 characters)
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