Friday, May 16 at 13:00 in Centro Carlos Santamaria Room 5. The talk will be hybrid. If you want to participate, please contact m.aste.tb2@gmail.com

In this talk, I examine the various ways in which researchers have thought about the continuity of life and non-life in the context of the origin of life. Specifically, we look at the role that continuity thinking has played in shaping and legitimizing origins of life research as a scientific field during the 20th century. We show there was a shift in continuity thinking in the middle of the 20th century. While the purpose of the principle of continuity during the first half was to oppose vitalism, its purpose in the second half was to oppose miraculism – the idea that the origin of life was so improbable that it was akin to a miracle. This shift is reflected in the views which challenged scientific research into the origins of life in each respective period. Despite this change, the notion of continuity continued to serve a legitimizing role in origins of life research: it turned the origin of life from an inscrutable mystery to a scientifically legitimate problem. We argue that the shift had two sources, the perceived obsoletism of vitalism and the introduction of the stepwise, chemical, and experimental approach that came to dominate origins of life research.