Origin of life: a deterministic or a chance event

Abstract

The idea of Anthropic Universe holds that the Universe was designed for creation of life. In the field of origin of life a similar view called determinism has been proposed by many biologists according to which, origin of life was predetermined. However, an alternative view is also there, called contingency, which advocates that life originated in this Universe just by chance. The present review summarizes the opinions of some workers in this field and also proposes that both determinism and contingency could have played their roles in origin of life.