The Vital Matrix: How Geochemistry Forged Life on Earth

di Gabriel Fernando Cao (Autore)

Gabriel Fernando Cao, 2025

The Vital Matrix: How Geochemistry Forged Life on Earth was conceived with the primary aim of challenging and restructuring the conventional narrative concerning the origin of life. It proposes an integrative synthesis that brings together diverse scientific disciplines under a new conceptual paradigm. Rather than merely presenting a catalogue of facts, the book offers a coherent framework for understanding life not as an improbable accident, but as a necessary and emergent property of planetary dynamics. The work seeks to dismantle the notion of life as a 'fortunate accident' or 'miracle'—an idea popularised by the 'Chance and Necessity' school of thought. To this end, it reintroduces and elevates the concept of the biosphere as the fourth geosphere, on equal footing with the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. A central argument of the book is that biochemistry did not arise ex nihilo but represents a direct and sophisticated continuation of organometallic chemistry occurring at the interface between lithosphere and hydrosphere. Challenging the traditionally assumed causal order in the origin of life (genes ? enzymes ? metabolism), the book proposes a 'metabolism-first' model. According to this view, complexity arises from the bottom up, progressing through a series of stable intermediate phases. The author contends that a self-sustaining metabolic network—specifically the reductive Krebs cycle (rTCA)—emerged first. Upon this scaffold, cofactors (organic tools such as vitamins) evolved, enabling biochemistry to "lift off the rocks" and gain increasing autonomy. Only within this chemically ordered context could the complex machinery of genetic translation be assembled. Beyond offering a historical narrative, the book grounds its thesis in fundamental physical principles, particularly those governing phase transitions in far-from-equilibrium systems, thereby providing a thermodynamic foundation for the emergence of biochemical complexity.

• Autore: Gabriel Fernando Cao
• Anno edizione: 2025
• Editore: Gabriel Fernando Cao
• Formato: EPUB2 con DRMFREE
• Lingua: Inglese
• Compatibilità: Tutti i dispositivi (eccetto Kindle)
• Layout: Reflowable
• EAN: 9798230938774