Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

This is all science fiction. No one has ever seen a hypercycle, progenote, etc. “How plausible is all this?” Pigluicci asks. Bravely upholding the honor of modern science as best he can, he replies, “It certainly is conceivable from the standpoint of modern biology. The problem is that each step is difficult to describe in detail from a theoretical standpoint, and so far (with the exception of the formation of organic molecules in the soup) has proven remarkably elusive from an empirical perspective. It looks like we have several clues, but the overall puzzle is proving to be one of the most difficult for scientific analysis to solve . . . the events in question are so far remote in time that there is very little we can be certain about, making any attempt at empirical investigation hopelessly vague.”