Santa Fe Institute economist Brian Arthur believed that much of what we see in global economic patterns can be explained by a process of ‘locking in’ of historical events (1). Notably, the success of the QWERTY keyboard or the increased sales of the VHS video system over its arch rival Beta Max did not depend so much on any inherent better quality of the winning system but rather on small details in the history of innovation that, over time, lead to the establishment and the overwhelming success of particular technologies (1). Once such winning technologies became wide-spread, they became a locked and established part of our culture.
Arthur undoubtedly received much of his insight from long conversations that he had with biophysicist Stuart Kaufman as the two of them thrashed out the concepts of biology and economic policy in an attempt to reconcile both under the umbrella of their unifying theory of complexity (1). It was clear that a great number of parallels could be drawn between these two otherwise distinct areas of research.
From an origin of life standpoint, Kauffman has long been unconvinced by the usual crop of prebiotic synthesis experiments. There is after all no basis upon which to suppose that amino acids and nucleotides could randomly form long polymer chains with specific functions such as we see in the cell (2). Following such a realization Kauffman became enthralled by the idea that maybe there was a self-organizing process through which compounds could come together in an autocatalytic cycle- a closed cycle of catalysts that converted one molecule to another in a self sustaining fashion (3). What was interesting about Kauffman’s idea was the manner through which he reached it- a multidisciplinary environment, such as the Santa Fe Institute with economists, political analysts and archaeologists coming together to look for a common thread uniting the emergence of complexity in lost civilizations, economically autonomous states and ultimately life’s biochemistry. Read More ›