Tag: Darwin

“…a warm little pond” That simple image of a lukewarm puddle comes from a letter that Charles Darwin wrote to botanist Joseph Hooker in 1871, wherein he speculated on the possible, purely chemical origins of life. It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that…