Competing research programmes on the origin of life

Summary

During the course of its short history the discipline concerned with the origin of life has given birth to several scientific programmes in the Lakatosian sense, two of the most prominent and widespread being those initiated by Oparin (life began from protein entities) and Muller-Haldane (life began from genetic entities). The present paper sets down the abses for the rational reconstruction of both views by identifying theirhard core and some of their successivedevelopments. An assessment is made of the various stages in the evolution of these programmes with respect to the crucial Lakatosian notions ofprogressivity andregressivity and of how their arguments stand up against one another. This epistemological analysis also establishes the internal reasons why the RNA version of thegenotype programme (developed in particulr by L. Orgel and S. Spiegelman) has today taken on a progressive character and enjoys recognition by the international scientific cvommunity.