@OutsiderChemists divide their subject into two main branches, organic and
inorganic. Organic chemistry is the chemistry of one particular
element, carbon.Inorganic chemistry is all the rest. Carbon is
important and deserves to have its ownprivate branch of chemistry,
partly because life chemistry is all carbon-chemistry,and partly
because those same properties that make carbon-chemistry suitable
forlife also make it suitable for industrial processes, such as those of
the plasticsindustry. The essential property of carbon atoms that
makes them so suitable for lifeand for industrial synthetics, is that
they join together to form a limitlessrepertoire of different kinds of
very large molecules. Another element that has someof these same
properties is silicon. Although the chemistry of modern Earth-bound
life is all carbon-chemistry, this may not be true all over the universe,
and itmay not always have been true on this Earth. Cairns-Smith
believes that the originallife on this planet was based on
self-replicating inorganic crystals such assilicates. If this is true,
organic replicators, and eventually DNA, must later havetaken over
or usurped the role.
R. Dawins, Blind Watchmaker (1996) S.149