Spontaneity

That which develops or occurs without apparent external influence, force, cause, or treatment manifests spontaneity; a spontaneous event is one that occurs as if by chance. This phenomenon seems to permeate every facet of life. Concerning its role for existence, and in hypothesizing on what may have functioned as a catalyst to the spark of life, Charles Darwin states that a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes” may have existed in some rudimentary form. Continuing, he states “at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.” As such, Darwin believes that the search for life must take place within sterile conditions of a laboratory, for intensely evolved present-day life would overpower the most basic of creations.

Perhaps the most fundamental, primordial case of spontaneity informs the big bang theory, which purports to explain the emergence of substance and ultimately life within the universe. In brief, the theory, as advanced by American astronomer Edwin Hubble, speculates that approximately 15 billion years ago, a tremendous explosion occurred, giving rise to all the energy and matter of the universe from one infinitesi-mally small point. The event was not like a conventional explosion, but rather one in which all the particles of the embryonic universe rushed away from each other, this creatingand still formingthe constantly expanding universe that exists today.

with such tremendous force of energy, the universe was, in these very early moments, unfathom-ably hot. As it expanded and thus cooled, at around 10“43 seconds after creation, there existed an almost equal yet asymmetrical amount of matter and antimatter. As these two materials originated together, they inadvertently collided and destroyed each other; luckily for us, there was an asymmetry that favored matter, and this incredibly small advantageabout one part per billion eventually matured into an environment receptive to material growth, the commonly referred to” plasma soup' of existence. Over billions of years, abnormalities, quirks, and external factors contributed to the increased complexity of this matter, to the point where life as we know it may well trace an elongated yet ultimately undetached line back to this condition.

Another famous instance involving the question of the origins of lifeabiogenesisis the now debunked 15th-century concept of spontaneous generation, which held that life of a more complex species could be traced to the breakdown of decaying organic substances. Perhaps the best-recognized example of this idea is the erroneous belief that maggots are created from the decaying meat of a once living creature, given that they are often viewed on such material yet never on the living creatures themselves. As a result of experimentation in the mid-1800s, Louis Pasteur discredited this idea with a demonstration that only when flying, burrowing, or crawling insects are permitted access to the dead matter in which they lay eggs does the meat give rise to living creatures.

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