EVENT

The Exploration of Life's Origin From Antiquity to the Present

Categories: 
Friday, October 5–6, 2018
7:00pm – 5:15pm
Sustainability, Energy and the Environment Complex (SEEC), CU Boulder, East Campus

The question of how life originated on Earth has fascinated human beings for more than two thousand years. [Cosmos_DNA] The Center for the Study of Origin’s 2018 Fall Symposium explores the question of the origin of life from a multidisciplinary perspective. Invited speakers include a scholar of biblical studies (Jacqueline Vayntrub, Yale University) speaking on mythic stories of the origin of life from the ancient world, an historian of biology (Jessica Riskin, Stanford University) speaking Lamarck’s views on the origin of life, a geophysicist (Robert Hazen, Carnegie Institute of Technology) discussing whether the emergence of life on the early Earth from nonliving chemicals was a matter of chance or physical necessity, and a biochemist (Sheref Mansy, University of Trento, Italy) investigating early metabolic systems. Additional speakers from the University of Colorado Boulder include philosopher Daniel Coren speaking on Aristotle’s ideas of life and self-motion, physical chemist Veronica Vaida speaking on prebiotic sources for the earliest biological molecules, and biologist Michael Yarus discussing the emergence of an initial genetic system in the RNA world. The goal of this symposium is to explore scientific and philosophical challenges involved in investigating the origin of life on Earth, as well as how the pursuit of an understanding of the origin of life has permeated our culture in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

More information: https://www.colorado.edu/origins/2018/07/27/fall-2018-symposium-exploration-lifes-origin-antiquity-present-october-5-6-2018