Hi, I’m also extremophile at wikipedia.
As the article about abiogenesis in the portuguese language wikipedia was not any good, recently I’ve made a major update. But my curiosity kept me looking for more and more sources, and I’ve found out many interesting things about the historical side of abiogenesis/spontaneous generation, and I’m yet planning to further improve the portuguese article.
I’ve read the article in english some time ago (prior to apparent creationist or creationist-sourced editions), and I think that it could also have some improvements in the sense of the improvements I’m planning for the portuguese article.
Basically, I think it could bring more historical details (and more historical acuracy), eliminating what seems to be false to me now, the "obvious" distinction between abiogenesis and SG. The article and what is generally seen around usually paint only the two extremes, Aristotelian SG, and modern abiogenesis theories, separated by an theoretical abyss. But in fact, seems that there was more of a subtle changing in thought, and many different modalities of things usually grab-bagged under the "spontaneous genration" label.
A example of graduallness of thought was the Bathybius, I think a idea that did not last long, about primordial life arising spontaneously, continuously, in the bottom of the seas, defended by Haeckel and Huxley (with less enthusiasm and a few cautious considerations) until it was discovered that was not a real biological phenomenon (Haeckel apparently kept deffending it a bit, even after that).
Also, is usually made much emphasis on the refutal of spontaneous generation by Louis Pasteur, and subsequent abandon of the idea by scientists, which, some sources point that was not that clean cut as generally depicted, but at first was more accepted in France, and later only with the works of John Tyndall and Ferdinand Cohn it came to be more accepted in other countries.
And again a detail of the gradualness of thought, involving Pasteur, was that he believed in "spontaneous generation" of parasitic worms (as many others did at that time, but maybe more properly defined as heterogenesis or xenogenesis), and if I’ve understood it clearly, he even believed in spontaneous generation of microbial life, althought he did not believed that it would occur under the circunstances studied by Pouchet and others.
I also think that there are interesting historical parts regarding the more recent history, such as Leonard Troland proposing something similar with RNA-world hypothesis, but prior to discover that nucleic acids were the carriers of genetic information.
I wrote a huge sketch for further improvements on the portuguese article, and translated it to english, it could at least be used as a source of "raw material" a more detailed basis for this improvements in this lines I’m suggesting here. I think that most sources are cited at the bottom of the page, but in a messy way.
User:Extremophile/Abiogenesis - Wikipedia
The more recently history part lacks yet some things I think should be there, like Sol Spiegelman and Mannfred Eigen’s experiences with RNA.
As a final suggestion, I think that the "critics" section could entirely go away, and panspermia would be mentioned only in the historical context. Other forms of critics, like religious resistance
specific of each epoch, could also be adressed this way. Maybe all the forms of critics could somehow fit in a "critics" category, but I don’t know how, due to the different nature of criticisms and it could make harder to write in a chronological sequence.
"Science comits suicide when it adopts a creed."
Thomas H. Huxley
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