Le problème des origines de la vie aux origines de la biologie - Par Laurent LOISON

Webinar of the French Society of Exobiology, presented on Thursday, March 12, 2026, by Laurent Loison, Research Director at the SPHERE laboratory (UMR 7219, Université Paris-Cité), on the theme "The Problem of the Origins of Life at the Origins of Biology: Lamarck, Schwann, Darwin" The problem of the origin of life is intrinsic to the rise of biology. In a static world where species are fixed entities to be classified—the world of natural history—the question of the nature of life, its physical causes, and its origin does not arise. It was around 1800 that the essential shift between natural history and biology occurred. Life then became a fully-fledged "physical fact," which had to be accounted for. Lamarck (founder of transformism) and Schwann (founder of cell theory) attempted to do so, leading them, each in their own way, to theorize the transition from inert to living matter. With Darwin, we witness another significant transformation: the question of the origin of life is no longer solely a matter of physics or chemistry, but becomes, for the first time, also a question of history.