You hear and read sometimes claims about what “all life” comes from, or consists of and so on, maybe not in actual science papers but at least in serious popular science literature. I take this to mean “all observable life in the conditions present on earth”.
But given the number of exo-planets in the observable universe it is one would think very likely that organic life happens all the time outside our solar system and this life obviously has not been studied (and there is no empirical proof that it exists). As far as I can tell though, saying “all life” and meaning “life forms observed on earth” rests more and not less on murky, non-rational foundations than assuming that life exists in many more places than on earth, which we have no reason to treat as a particularly special place (as if it has somehow been selected as the only place where matter combines into organic materials under certain circumstances).
It might be a nit-picky observation, but I wonder how these things are treated in more scientific literature. Is “life” even a useful term and if not, what is the term used in the study of exo planets for example? How does scientific language get around the “geocentric” bias in expressions like “all life” and so on?
Yes, what is so interesting about it is that from one perspective it really is a non issue - every sane person knows that the life that has been scientifically studied is life on earth so that is obviously what the statement refers to. However, when one says “all life” and means “all life that has been studied on earth” one unintentionally implies that life only exists on earth. We have only observed life on earth and have no proof for life elsewhere, but at the same time, it is equally unscientific to say that life does exist beyond the solar system with no proof of this as saying that life must necessarily only exist on earth when it is statistically unlikely that it doesn’t exist elsewhere. I know I am splitting hairs here, but as a humanist I just became very fascinated with the limits of reasonably readable language to convey the nuances of this conundrum.