Herrera's 'Plasmogenia' and Other Collected Works: Early Writings on the Experimental Study of the Origin of Life

216 Pages·2014·8.541 MB·English

by  Henderson James Cleaves, Antonio Lazcano, Ismael Ledesma Mateos, Alicia Negrón-Mendoza, Juli Peretó, Ervin Silva (auth.)

Herrera’s ‘Plasmogenia’ and Other Collected
Works
Henderson James Cleaves • Antonio Lazcano
Ismael Ledesma Mateos • Alicia Negrón-Mendoza
Juli Peretó • Ervin Silva
Herrera’s ‘Plasmogenia’
and Other Collected Works
Early Writings on the Experimental Study
of the Origin of Life
1 3
Henderson James Cleaves Alicia Negrón-Mendoza
Earth-Life Science Institute Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares
Tokyo Institute of Technology Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Tokyo Mexico D.F.
Japan Distrito Federal
Mexico
Antonio Lazcano
Facultad de Ciencias Juli Peretó
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Institut Cavanilles de Biodiversitat
Ciudad Universitaria i Biologia Evolutiva
Distrito Federal Universitat de València
Mexico València
Spain
Ismael Ledesma Mateos
Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala Ervin Silva
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Tlanepantla Mexico D.F.
Estado de México Distrito Federal
Mexico Mexico
This work collects a translation of Nociones de Biología, originally published in 1904 by Imprenta de
la Secretaria de Fomento, Mexico, a reprint of Plasmogeny, originally published as a chapter in Colloid
Chemistry: Theoretical and Applied, Volume 2: Biology and Medicine, in 1928 by The Chemical Cata-
log Company, Inc., and a translation of La Plasmogenía: Nueva Ciencia del Origen de la Vida, originally
published in 1932 in Spain by Cuadernos de Cultura, Valencia.
ISBN 978-1-4939-0735-9 ISBN 978-1-4939-0736-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-0736-6
Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936256
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 1904, 1928, 1932, 2014
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Foreword to Collected Works of Alfonso
Herrera
The book you hold contains scientific work long relegated to obscurity in modern
biology after Herrera’s death in 1942. Herrera’s “plasmogeny” fit into a tradition
popular from the late nineteenth century up through the 1930s, sometimes referred
to as “cell model experiments.” Neurophysiologist Reinhard Beutner, for exam-
ple, in his 1938 book Life’s Beginnings on the Earth described Hererra’s work and
similar cell model experiments as informative guides to understanding the basic
properties of the simplest living systems and what role osmotic and other physical
forces play in producing growth, division, etc. of structures that imitate such lifelike
actions. This research tradition was closely related to colloid chemistry, especially
from 1910 until the late 1930s, after which the macromolecular approach (what
later became “molecular biology”) began to eclipse colloid chemical explanations
of living phenomena. Since the late 1970s, in light of “autotroph first” thinking and
other recent trends in origin of life research, many modern researchers have taken
up Hererra’s work again and found in it much that was foresighted. Some experi-
ments by Adolph Smith and Gary Steinman using formaldehyde and ammonium
thiocyanate were directly influenced by Hererra’s work.1 Sidney Fox also expressed
indebtedness to Hererra’s insight about the importance of thiocyanate.2Thus, this is
an opportune moment for the republication (and first English translation) of some
of Hererra’s works.
Both scientists and historians of science will find this a valuable resource. In-
dependently of modern recognition of his insights, Hererra’s work was prominent
among thinkers about the origin of life from the 1910s through the late 1930s.
Herrera had a wide international correspondence network to whom he circulated
his Bulletin of Plasmogeny, ranging from Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin to
psychoanalyst-turned-laboratory scientist Wilhelm Reich. Hererra corresponded
with Reich in 1939 about Reich’s recent “bion experiments.” Reich, like Herrera
was much influenced by German physiologist Eduard Pflüger and his theory that
1 Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astro-
biology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 2004), pp. 71-72.
2 Sidney Fox, The Emergence of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1988); see also Stanley Miller, J.
William Schopf and Antonio Lazcano, “Oparin’s Origin of Life: Sixty Years Later,” J. Molec. Evol.
44: 351-353 (1997).
v
vi Foreword to Collected Works of Alfonso Herrera
cyanogen (CN ) was a key component of the chemistry that produced the first life
2
on Earth.3
As noted in the historical introduction to this volume, Hererra was marginalized
in Mexican biology after 1929, and many of those who took an interest in his work
were critics of the establishment marginalized to some extent in their own countries
(Reich, for example, was a Marxist). This did not prevent Hererra’s work from be-
ing highly regarded abroad, however. Prominent figures like Jerome Alexander in
colloid chemistry gave Hererra considerable notice in his own time, and Hererra’s
final publication was in the prestigious American journal Science. And of course the
likes of Stanley Miller, Norman Horowitz and Sidney Fox were prominent figures
who took an interest in Hererra’s work decades after his death.
What insights about surface tension, rudimentary metabolism, the role of Dar-
winian evolution in the origin of life, etc. can be gleaned from Hererra’s writings?
How can those writings help us better understand the history of thought about the
origin of life from 1900-1940? Read on, and judge for yourself.
By James E. Strick Dept. of Earth and Environment
Franklin and Marshall College
3 James E. Strick, Wilhelm Reich, Biologist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, forthcoming 2014).
Introductory Notes
Alfonso L. Herrera generated a large number of publications during the course of
his career. With the recent uptick in interest in research into the origin of life, we
present here three of them representing various stages of the development of his
thinking, in chronological order of their publication, with the aim of making his
works more widely accessible to the non-Spanish speaking readership of the origin
of life and history of science communities. Nociones de Biología was originally pre-
pared as an introductory university-level biology text and published in Mexico in
1904. Plasmogeny (1928) was originally published in English in the United States
as a chapter in volume two of Jerome Alexander’s four volume compendium on
colloid chemistry ( Colloid Chemistry: Theoretical and Applied, Volume 2: Biology
and Medicine). La Plasmogenía: Nueva Ciencia del Origen de la Vida, published
in 1932, is a considerably shortened version (45 pp.) of a 1926 volume entitled Una
Nueva Ciencia. La Plasmogenía (446 pp.). Both were published in Spain.
Two of them ( Nociones de Biología and La Plasmogenía) are presented for the
first time in English translation. Nociones was translated by HJC and proof-read
for accuracy by AL, ILM, ANM and JP. La Plasmogenía was translated by Fabiola
Barraclough and proof-read by the present authors. The chapter from Alexander’s
second Colloid Chemistry volume is presented in its original format. Translations
were kept as close as possible to the original intended meaning, keeping the termi-
nology of the time of writing, but worked so as to improve the flow of the modern
English translation. The introduction is based on publications authored by ILM and
ANM, as translated by HJC and modified by AL.
The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of funding from the
Secció de Ciències Biològiques de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans (JP), the NASA
Astrobiology Institute Post-Doctoral Program, the NASA/NSF Center for Chemi-
cal Evolution for support during the preparation of this work, and the Earth-Life
Science Institute of the Tokyo Institute of technology (HJC), as well as PAPIIT
grant No. IN110712-3 and CONACYT grant No. 168579/11 (ANM). The digitized
vii
viii Introductory Notes
images from La Plasmogenía: Nueva Ciencia del Origen de la Vida were gener-
ously provided by Soledat Rubio (Càtedra de Divulgació de la Ciència, University
of Valencia).
The authors sincerely hope these materials will shed some deserved light on Her-
rera’s work during this widely overlooked era in research and thinking regarding the
origin of life.
Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1
CoNCepts IN BIoLoGY ............................................................................ 7
plasmogeny ....................................................................................................... 163
pLAsMoGeNY, A NeW sCIeNCe oF tHe oRIGIN oF LIFe ............. 177
ix
Introduction
Charles Darwin’s reluctance to discuss the origin of life surprised some of his dis-
ciples and even led to some harsh criticism. The list includes Ernst Haeckel, one
of his loyal followers, who wrote a few years after the publication of The Origin
of Species that “[t]he chief defect of the Darwinian theory is that it throws no light
on the origin of the primitive organism –probably a simple cell –from which all the
others have descended. When Darwin assumes a special creative act for this first
species, he is not consistent, and, I think, not quite sincere…” (Haeckel 1862).
However, Darwin was very much aware of the distinction between the issue of
the appearance of living beings, and the understanding of the processes underlying
their evolution. He had also realized that at that time it was not feasible to undertake
the experimental study of the origin of life. As he noted in the 1861 3rd edition of
the Origin of Species, “I have now recapitulated the chief facts and considerations
which have thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified, during a
long course of descent, by the preservation or the natural selection of many succes-
sive slight favourable variations. I cannot believe that a false theory would explain,
as it seems to me that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large
classes of facts above specified. It is no valid objection that science as yet throws
no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life” (cf. Peretó et al.
2009).
And yet, The Origin of Species provided an evolutionary framework for analyz-
ing the origin of life, and the possibility that living organisms were the historical
outcome of the gradual transformation of lifeless matter became widespread after
its publication. This approach would soon merge with experimental observations
and the search for a physicochemical basis of life that resulted from descriptions of
the gelatinous, water-insoluble substance that was found inside all cells which was
termed “protoplasm” by the physician Johann E. Purkinje and the botanist Hugo
von Mohl, who like others argued that it was the basic component of life (Lazcano
2009).
These ideas, which were based on Thomas Graham’s 1861 proposal that the
protoplasm was a colloid formed by a homogenous, proteinaceous substance, were
understood by many as implying that living organisms were the evolutionary out-
come of the gradual transformation of lifeless gel-like matter into protoplasm. This
H. J. Cleaves et al., Herrera’s ‘Plasmogenia’ and Other Collected Works, 1
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-0736-6_1, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2014