Petrophilia: A Brief Note on the Geochemical Origin of Life and the Religious Worship of Rocks

Der Nietzsche-Stein [1]

 

 

I. 

 

According to Deleuze and Guattari, not only do plants and animals sing and express themselves, so too do rocks [2]. I don't quite know what they mean by this, but as a petrophile, it's always been an idea that resonated with me. 

 

Of course, I know that rocks are not alive. But I also know that biochemistry rests upon geochemistry and that researchers have shown how rocks and minerals play a crucial role in almost every phase of life's emergence; catalysing, for example, the synthesis of biomolecules, and kick-starting metabolism [3]. 

 

In fact, according to the British organic chemist and molecular biologist Graham Cairns-Smith, the very earliest form of life was possibly a type of clay mineral able to carry genetic information and evolve. This is a provocative and controversial claim, but one that has been taken seriously by philosophers interested in the question of what does and does not constitute life [4].

 

We usually think of the latter as being carbon-based and involving cells containing DNA. But Cairns-Smith obliges us to ask if that was always the case - and must it always be the same on distant alien planets? 

 

 

II. 

 

When feeling in a slightly less scientific and more religious frame of mind, I'm also tempted to agree with D. H. Lawrence that from the smallest stone to the greatest rock we find God made manifest [5]. 

 

It seems that those ancient pagans who practiced their pantheism in material (non-abstract) terms were profoundly right to do so; for "everything that has being has being in the flesh" [6].

 

Interestingly, we might note in closing how even some modern Christians celebrate Jesus as the Rock of Ages, i.e., an unfailing and seemingly everlasting presence in their lives [7].  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] According to Nietzsche, the central idea of Thus Spoke Zarathustra - i.e., the idea of eternal recurrence - came to him when he encountered this large rock on the shores of Lake Silvaplana (Switzerland).

 

[2] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 44.

 

[3] See Robert M. Hazen (ed.), 'Genesis: Rocks, Minerals, and the Geochemical Origin of Life', Elements Vol. 1 (June 2005), pp. 135-137.

 

[4] See Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, (Cambridge University Press, 1985).

      This book popularized the clay hypothesis, which promoted the idea that self-replication of clay crystals in solution might provide a simple intermediate step between biologically inert matter and organic life.

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 95.

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Bodiless God', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 605. See also the poem 'The Body of God' on the same page of the above.

 

[7] This well-known Christian hymn written by Reformed Anglican minister Augustus Toplady was first published (in full and with a revised first verse) in The Gospel Magazine in March 1776.