Introduction

Chemical Evolution
In research on the origins of life, the concept of “chemical evolution” aims at
explaining the transition from non-living matter to living matter. There is however
strong disagreement when it comes to defining this concept more precisely, and in
particular with reference to a chemical form of Darwinian evolution: for some,
chemical evolution is nothing but Darwinian evolution applied to chemical systems
before life appeared; yet, for others, it is the type of evolution that happened before
natural selection took place, the latter being the birthmark of living systems. This
study reviews both sides of the ‘Chemical Evolution’ coin and emphasis on the
research done by Melvin Calvin.

The term “chemical evolution“ was introduced by the Nobel Prize winner
Melvin Calvin and refers to the process of the synthesis of biochemically important
molecules from small molecules and certain chemical elements under the conditions
present on prebiotic Earth. It is assumed that the smaller “building block” molecules
such as amino acids, fatty acids or nucleobases were formed initially, and that these
underwent polycondensation to give macromolecules in later stages of development.

Melvin Ellis Calvin, was a great biochemist who was the first scientist to unravel
the secrets of photosynthesis—knowledge that became known as “the Calvin cycle.”
He gave significant contributions to other various fields as well such as electronic,
photoelectronic, photochemical behavior of porphyrins and organic geochemistry.

~1~
Historical Overview of Chemical Evolution
Calvin’s view about chemical evolution is well developed in his 1969 book
Chemical Evolution, but it goes back, at least, to a series of articles and reports in
the 1950s in which Calvin proposes to define chemical evolution as an evolutionary
process somehow similar to, and in continuity with, Darwinian evolution, but
transposed to the purely chemical world that preceded the appearance of life on
primitive Earth some four billion years ago. It is also in these articles and reports that
Calvin makes ample use of catalysts– his main research focus– to try and illustrate
how such a chemical evolution could have worked.

As is often the case with concepts in general, the idea of such a chemical
evolution can be found earlier in the literature. For instance, already in the 1930s,
one of the early proponents of research on the origins of life, the Russian biochemist
Alexander Oparin wrote about the topic and claimed that “the simplest living
organisms originated gradually by a long evolutionary process of organic
substances”. Also, in the 1910s, in a book about the origin and the nature of life, the
British chemist Benjamin Moore referred, in quite lyrical terms, to a “process of
chemical evolution” that “brought life to the womb of our ancient mother earth in the
far distant Palaeozoic ages”. Earlier still, claims of a “chemical evolution” could be
found in the writings of the French biologist Félix Le Dantec. And a few decades in
his Principles of Biology, Herbert Spencer mentioned the idea of an “inorganic
evolution” and of an “evolution of organic matter” that would have preceded the
evolution of living forms. Along the same lines of thought, Calvin proposed the
“chemical evolution” as “the time for the formation of chemicals of various degrees
of complexity upon the surface of the Earth, but before the appearance of systems
that we could call living”. And this conception of chemical evolution is the one that is
often referred to in his later writings.

~2~
Melvin Calvin’s idea of Chemical Evolution
What Calvin makes explicit in the 1950s is the central explanatory role that a
biologically-inspired evolutionary process, namely that of natural selection, could
play within chemical evolution. For Calvin, the very mechanism of chemical evolution
is nothing but the mechanism of natural selection taken in its simplest form as the
interplay of variation, reproduction and selection. The theory of chemical evolution
therefore appears as an immediate extension of natural selection to an abiotic world
of molecules.

Calvin’s theory dates back 13.7 billion years to the time of the Big Bang, the
formation of the universe. His idea begins with the division of periods (Figure 1) from
the genesis of the universe to the present Cenozoic Era, also known as the Modern
Era.

Fig 1

~3~
Nuclear Evolution
Calvin named the period from the Big Bang to the formation of the Earth ‘
Nuclear Evolution’.

Genesis of the Universe - The Big Bang Theory

In detail, this theory tell us that According to this theory, the whole universe
was together at one singularity. Then then there was a “Big Bang” which resulted in
the formation of galaxies (Figure 2). These galaxies then divided to form stars,
planets, the sun, the moon etc. The origin of the universe is unique, and the
probability of it occurring by chance is essentially “zero”.

Fig 2

~4~
Formation of Earth
The temperature of the universe after the Big Bang, was about hundred billion
degrees Celsius. The huge collection of dust and gases formed then began to spin.
As it spun faster and faster, the centre became very hot. It became the Sun. From
the edges of this ball of dust and gas, big blobs or chunks of dust broke off and
formed eight ball shaped planets. This founded our solar system. The earth broke
off about 4.5 billion years ago with an explosion. It was a burning hot white mass of
gas and dust. Over a long period of time, dust and gas gradually condensed to
form solid rock. Such condensation and shrinking made the earth heat up so much
that the rock melted into a gluey liquid. After millions of years, the outer surface of
the earth or the earth’s crust cooled and formed hard rock again. The interior of the
earth is still very hot. The first elements Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He) are said to
be formed in this period of time.

~5~
Chemical Evolution
According to Calvin, in order to begin chemical evolution one had to decide
on what sort of earth they had to work on – what sort of a chemical system did we
had about 2-1/2 billion years ago. The geochemists at that time couldn’t agree on
whether the atmosphere of the earth was an oxidized one on reduced one, by
which Calvin meant if the carbon atoms present on the surface of the earth
combined mostly with oxygen or combined mostly with hydrogen which would be
oxidized atmosphere and reduced atmosphere respectively. In which either one or
some intermediate stage between them would have worked. The reason to know
which one – oxidized or reduced – is that there were at least four different ways that
less complicated compounds could have been formed in each of them. Calvin goes
with the reduced atmosphere as it seemed easier for simple compounds to be
formed there. He had checked all four methods which were all successful. These
methods were proposed by J. B. S Haldane and Oparin and others. These
methods used electric discharge, addition reaction, decreasing temperature and
high energy radiation. The first compounds Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Methane
(CH4) are said to be formed from these methods. The compounds which form from
these methods are shown in Figure 3.

Fig 3

~6~
 The reason as of why Calvin knew when chemical evolution had taken place
2 billion years ago was that, as he answered himself,

“Today organic matter cannot accumulate on the surface of the earth, and the
reason for this is that there are too many living things to eat it up. At the time we
are talking about there weren’t any such living things, and if organic substances -
that is, materials containing carbon-carbon bonds and carbon-hydrogen bonds -
were created by any one of these methods, they would remain.”

Calvin states those compounds were not selected randomly to react with
each other forming complex compounds but were specifically selected for this task.

As said “If we have a random selection of chemicals that can transform themselves
from one into another, and if at some given instant in a random way one chemical
happens to form that will catalytically cause the transformation of some of the
others into itself, you can see that those others will all go to this one that has
randomly formed as a catalyst instead of going in other directions. And thus we
have the process of selection.”

These compounds then continue this process and form more complex
compounds leading to the current chemical system.

In summary, Chemical Evolution is a continuous process, beginning with a

~7~
The non-Darwinian View of Chemical Evolution
According to the non-Darwinian view, chemical evolution consists of
evolutionary processes that are totally different from natural selection, the latter
being understood to be the true birthmark of biological evolution. Gerald Joyce for
instance, a prominent researcher in the field of origins of life, defends such a view
when he claims that “the worlds of prebiotic chemistry and primitive biology lie on
opposite sides of the defining moment for life, when Darwinian evolution first began
to operate .Once a general mechanism existed for self-replication, allowing the
introduction of variation and the ability to replicate those variants, Darwinian
evolution began to operate. This marked the beginning of life” By distinguishing
prebiotic chemistry from Darwinian evolution, Joyce reduces chemical evolution to
a set of spontaneous chemical reactions on primitive Earth, constrained by
thermodynamic and kinetic possibilities. Of course, processes of selection were
possible under chemical evolution: such processes are typically associated with
faster chemical reactions. Processes of variation fit this view of chemical evolution
if seen as chemical reactions leading to the spontaneous accumulation of varied
compounds. However, any interplay between these processes, especially the
association of replication with variation and selection, would shift from chemical
evolution to Darwinian biological evolution. In a non-Darwinian view of chemical
evolution, as espoused by de Duve, the dividing line between chemical and
biological evolution lies in both a shift in the nature of the evolutionary process and
a change in the nature of the evolving entities. The process of Darwinian selection
clearly belongs to biological evolution and distinguishes it from chemical evolution,
which is largely confined to prebiotic chemistry. Simultaneously, as in the
Darwinian perspective, the nature of evolving entities transitions from non-living to
living as one moves from chemical evolution to biological evolution

~8~
Life as demarcation criteria?
Both the Darwinian and the non-Darwinian accounts of chemical evolution
use “life” as a key criteria to distinguish chemical evolution from biological
evolution. Yet both views rest on, what I will argue is, a faulty premise according to
which it is possible to clearly delineate living from non-living matter. I propose four
reasons for rejecting “life” as a demarcation criteria. First, there is a wide
disagreement about defining life. Definitions of life abound and yet, there is still no
agreement on any of them: counter-examples are often offered that defy even the
most elaborate definitions. Border-line entities such as viruses are often invoked,
some arguing that they should not be included within the circle of living systems in
so far as they lack metabolic activity others arguing the contrary, for instance
grounding their arguments on the viral factories that virus generate Some also
argue that self-replicating strands of RNA, like those of the RNA world scenario
should qualify as living whereas others disagree for lack of metabolic activity and
membrane enclosure And there are many other border-line cases including
autocatalytic networks and protocells As such, the lack of a generally accepted
definition of life makes it problematic to use “life” as demarcation criteria. This
disagreement about defining life shows that there is a fairly wide range of ways of
delineating living matter from non-living matter. Incidentally, this also points to a
“gray-zone” in between what one would intuitively qualify as living and what one
would definitely count as non-living. One can therefore argue that there is no sharp
delineation between non-living and living matter, and that “life”, as we know it today
on Earth, can somehow be considered as the outcome of a succession of “more-or-
less alive” systems. As a result, any dichotomous definition of life is bound to fail.
Instead, life ought to be defined as a fuzzy or multi-valued predicate based on a
zero-to-one scale The ranking of any “more-or-less alive” system along this scale
would then result from a sum of its different life-like functions: for instance, a

~9~
system may be capable of metabolic activity without being able to reproduce itself;
another system may be able to self-replicate without any metabolic activity; yet
another one may be capable of metabolism and of reproduction, yet not of
variation; and so forth. In addition, any such system may be more-or-less
successful along any of these functional dimensions, for instance at making copies
of itself, at generating variants of itself, at harnessing energy and metabolites etc.
As a result, one can conceive the “gray-zone” in between non-living and living
matter as being populated by a broad range of systems, each being “more-or-less
alive” in its own way. The existence of such a multidimensional gray-zone helps
reconcile differing viewpoints about definitions of life and border line cases; yet it
also argues against the possibility to use “life” as a clear cut demarcation criteria
that could be used to delineate biological evolution from chemical evolution.
Thirdly, if one wishes anyway to adopt a dichotomous definition of life–with a view
to using it as demarcation criteria– one will soon face a dilemma with respect to
excluding from evolutionary biology some of the entities that are studied within this
discipline. Indeed, dichotomous definitions of life tend to exclude entities such as
viruses and plasmids from the set of living systems. If one adopts such a strict
definition of life as demarcation criteria of biological evolution, then the evolution of
such entities should not be explained by biological evolution but by chemical
evolution. Yet this is clearly not the case, as viruses and plasmids are usually
considered as part of the entities that do evolve by natural selection. Lastly, taking
life as demarcation criteria also brings with it the risk of defining chemical evolution
as a set of teleological processes leading to life. Life–as we know it– certainly is an
outcome of chemical evolution. Yet defining chemical evolution on the basis of this
outcome is problematic and carries a heavy teleological connotation. Furthermore,
this may also tend to exclude chemical evolutionary phenomena that may not lead
to life but yet be interesting in themselves, or that may lead to other forms of life
(than the one we know on Earth).
~ 10 ~
Conclusion
While Calvin proposes a purely Darwinian view of chemical evolution, others
support a non-Darwinian account that limits natural selection to biological evolution.
These perspectives seem irreconcilable at first, but both assume a dichotomous
view of ‘life’ separating living from non-living entities. Adopting a more gradual view
of ‘life’ resolves the tension between these views. I argue there are good reasons
to adopt this gradual view, which also supports considering chemical and biological
evolution as a continuum. While paradigm cases of biological evolution are clear
examples of natural selection, other cases rely on different evolutionary processes
or involve entities like viruses or plasmids that are not clearly alive. Research on
the origins of life suggests a ‘gray zone’ of systems that may be more or less alive
along different dimensions. Calvin, like Joyce and de Duve, views chemical and
biological evolution as connected by a sharp transition, defined by a dichotomous
concept of ‘life.’ However, there are strong reasons to consider the transition from
chemical to biological evolution as gradual.

~ 11 ~
Bibliography
 Melvin Calvin’s “Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life” (Article).
 Christophe Malaterre’s “Chemical Evolution and life” (Article).
 Robert M. Hazen’s “Chemical Evolution: An Introduction” (Article).
 Horst Rauchfuss’s “Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life” (Book).
 Osama Rahil’s “Big Bang Theory” (Presentation).
 E.V. Sharkov’s “The Earth's core formation and development: evidence from
evolution of tectonomagmatic processes and paleomagnetic data” (Article).
 Wikipedia (Website).

~ 12 ~