From The First Gene, Chapter 9: “Inanimate nature … cannot scheme to locally and temporarily circumvent the 2nd Law.”

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February 22, 2012

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In The First Gene, David Abel’s Chapter 9 covers “Examining specific life-origin models for plausibility”:

Abstract: All models of life-origin, whether Protometabolism-First or pre-RNA / RNA World early informational self-replicative models, encounter the same dead-end: no naturalistic mechanism exists to steer objects and events toward eventual functionality. No insight, motive, foresight or impetus exists to integrate physicochemical reactions into a cooperative, organized, pragmatic effort.

Inanimate nature cannot pursue the goal of homeostasis; it cannot scheme to locally and temporarily circumvent the 2nd Law. This deadlock affects all naturalistic models involving hypercycles, composomes and chemotons. It precludes all spontaneous geochemical, hydrothermal, eutectic, and photochemical scenarios. It affects the Lipid, Peptide and Zinc World models. It pertains to Co-evolution and all other code-origin models.

No plausible hypothetical scenario exists that can convert chance and/or necessity into an organized protometabolic scheme. In this paper the general principles of previous chapters are applied to the best specific models of life origin in the literature. Tibor Ganti’s chemoton model and the pre-RNA and RNA World models receive more attention, as they are the most well-developed and preferred scenarios.

Here are the chapter topic heads:

Introduction: Every naturalistic life-origin model encounters the same great impasse 232
1. Cairns-Smith clay life 233
2. Silicon and Boron based life 234
3. Geochemical self-organization models 236
4. Protometabolism First Models 238
4.1 Composomes 239
4.2 Compartmentalization 240
4.3 The problem of sequencing 241
4.4 Hypercycles 241
4.5 Tibor Ganti’s well-developed chemoton model 242
5. Self-replicative, auto-catalytic, informational models 256
5.1 RNA World models 256
5.2 PreRNA World and RNA analogs 260
6. Early photosynthetic models 262
7. Code-origin models 264
8. Composome, Chemoton, and RNA evolution models would have been extremely 265
limited
9. Panspermia 269
10. Conclusions

Comments

No offense taken, I was glad to provide Nick this very fitting song for the empirical predicament that he has in actually proving anything he asserted:
4-Him – Can’t Get Past The Evidence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiRQxEOWdDw
bornagain77_{February 23, 2012
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BTW, the "open system" business -- the idea that a system is somehow amenable to evolutionary processes if the system is "open" -- is such a complete load of nonsense it is hard to overstate. I presume everyone on this thread is up to speed on that point so we don't need to spend time on it . . .Eric Anderson_{February 23, 2012
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Nick: "[Cue some Christian rock apologetics song on youtube by ba77]" LOL! (Sorry, bornagain77, but I had to laugh at that one! No offense.) ------ Nick, though, you are grasping at some pretty incredible straws:
Its essence is that life is a kinetic phenomenon that derives from the kinetic consequences of autocatalysis operating on specific biopolymeric systems . . .
So, life is characterized by movement (kinetic), rather than thermodynamic processes? What the heck does that even mean? What is driving and controlling this movement?
. . . from a chemical perspective the replication reaction is an extreme expression of kinetic control, one in which thermodynamic requirements have evolved to play a supporting, rather than a directing, role. The analysis leads us to propose a new sub-division within chemistry — replicative chemistry.
Yeah, the replication process (it isn't a "reaction" it is a detailed and coordinated process with numerous physical and chemical reactions as a part of it, but we'll forgive their poor choice of words) has very careful kinetic control. But again, where does that control come from? The movement itself? A new sub-division of chemistry, really? In which, we are led to believe, the normal chemical processes give way to . . . wait for it . . . movement . . . I'm not arguing for a particular thermodynamic approach here, just pointing out that this new alleged "kinetic" "replicative chemistry" doesn't give us any reason to doubt that the normal operational chemistry we have all learned to know and love is driving the process (under the direction of information). As an argument for how evolution could work, and as an argument against the thermodynamic issues, this "kinetic" stuff is a non-starter.Eric Anderson_{February 23, 2012
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kairosfocus:
In that context, the standard “open systems” talking point used to dismiss thermodynamics linked concerns on pre biotic soup or volcano vent or comet etc spontaneous chemistry origin of life speculations falls apart.
So the 2nd isn't necessarily violated, just nervous. Valid points here though and we'll see if they can be answered.
The increasingly obvious disarray of OOL studies ... is ideologically propped up by the question-begging a priori imposition ...
Problem solved: It's just the increase of ideological entropy. And while it's valid to note that they are creatively hobbled we cannot get to:
... but instead (b) what is sufficiently likely to happen as to be a practically observable outcome on the gamut of available resources.
One cannot deny the gOOLs implausibility and miracle when putting forth your own miracle as an alternate. No matter, one off events do not make bell curves and have no place in science. It makes not a whit whether your ideological blinders are correct, or theirs are, or anything else.Maus_{February 23, 2012
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In my opinion, Abel makes a careful distinction between order and organisation. He is also careful about the 2nd law. For open systems there exists the S-theorem due to Klimontovich, an analogue of the H-theorem of Bolzman for isolated systems. According to the S-theorem, the further the system gets from the equilibrium in an open system, the smaller the normalised entropy becomes. This in essense explains the spontaneous emergence of regularities in matter. However, every time Abel talks about this, while acknowledging the truth of spontaneous emergence of regularities, he points to the absence of any empirical observation of spontaneous emergence of cybernetic control. He points out that self-ordering is not the same as self-organisation. He is absolutely right.Eugene S_{February 23, 2012
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Dr Matzke: It is time that several NCSE riding horse talking points on thermodynamics and the relevance of such to the molecular basis of cell based life were put out to pasture. Thermodynamics, as you should know, comes in two relevant and complementary flavours, classical and statistical; the latter grounding the former on the atomic-molecular view of the world that finally prevailed after Einstein's clever analysis of Brownian motion as a directly observable molecular effect. And, let us doff hats and remember the casualty along the way, Boltzmann. In this context, building on Maxwell (and his demon), Szilard and Brillouin, Jaynes et al have built an informational approach to thermodynamics that is instructive. That view was highly controversial for many years, but as Wikipedia recently summarised (speaking inadvertently against ideological interest), we may clip:
At an everyday practical level the links between information entropy and thermodynamic entropy are not close. Physicists and chemists are apt to be more interested in changes in entropy as a system spontaneously evolves away from its initial conditions, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, rather than an unchanging probability distribution. And, as the numerical smallness of Boltzmann's constant kB indicates, the changes in S / kB for even minute amounts of substances in chemical and physical processes represent amounts of entropy which are so large as to be right off the scale compared to anything seen in data compression or signal processing. But, at a multidisciplinary level, connections can be made between thermodynamic and informational entropy, although it took many years in the development of the theories of statistical mechanics and information theory to make the relationship fully apparent. In fact, in the view of Jaynes (1957), thermodynamics should be seen as an application of Shannon's information theory: the thermodynamic entropy is interpreted as being an estimate of the amount of further Shannon information needed to define the detailed microscopic state of the system, that remains uncommunicated by a description solely in terms of the macroscopic variables of classical thermodynamics. For example, adding heat to a system increases its thermodynamic entropy because it increases the number of possible microscopic states that it could be in, thus making any complete state description longer. (See article: maximum entropy thermodynamics.[Also,another article remarks: >>in the words of G. N. Lewis writing about chemical entropy in 1930, "Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more" . . . in the discrete case using base two logarithms, the reduced Gibbs entropy is equal to the minimum number of yes/no questions that need to be answered in order to fully specify the microstate, given that we know the macrostate. >>]) Maxwell's demon can (hypothetically) reduce the thermodynamic entropy of a system by using information about the states of individual molecules; but, as Landauer (from 1961) and co-workers have shown, to function the demon himself must increase thermodynamic entropy in the process, by at least the amount of Shannon information he proposes to first acquire and store; and so the total entropy does not decrease (which resolves the paradox).
Boiling down, if a system is in a sharply constrained state that reflects itself in a more or less macro-observable result, that state is highly informational relative to the possible alternative arrangements of mass and energy at what Brillouin called ultramicroscopic level. That is, to clump then organise molecular components to form a nanomachine, is highly informational and reduces the relevant entropy (viewed in information terms) dramatically. So also, given the vastly larger number of physically possible micro-arrangements of the components, compared to the number of possible trials on the gamut of the observed cosmos or our solar system, we can see that spontaneous chemical action is going to have a major challenge explaining such nanomachines. For instance the 10^57 atoms of our solar system will have about 10^102 possible Planck-time quantum states, but something that embodies 500 bits of functionally specific and complex information (explicitly or implicitly) exists in a context of 3 * 10^150 possible configurational states -- for instance, think of monomers chained in a linear polymer acting as a string data structure. For D/RNA, 500 bits worth of storage comes very fast, 250 monomers. So, there is a major sampling the space of possibilities -- search for the needle in the haystack, or monkeys at keyboards typing at random -- challenge to any spontaneous formation of functional DNA argument. Notice, this is NOT a probability argument that pivots on how we may calculate probabilities, a favourite strawman talking point. this is a sampling the space of possibilities challenge and the well known point that a relatively small blind sample will normally reflect the BULK of a distribution, not special and unrepresentative clusters. In the case in view, we could compare to taking a blind one-straw sized sample from a cubical haystack 3 1/2 light days across. Even if a whole solar system lurked within, like ours out to Pluto, sampling theory tells us the overwhelmingly likely outcome of such a sample will be straw, and nothing else. In that context, the standard "open systems" talking point used to dismiss thermodynamics linked concerns on pre biotic soup or volcano vent or comet etc spontaneous chemistry origin of life speculations falls apart. Sure, uncorrelated injections of energy that are not coupled to a mechanism do occur all the time. Overwhelmingly, they tend to push systems towards less and less constrained states for the same reason why in Clausius' key example used to ground the classic understanding of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, the heat-receiving subsystem, B, INCREASES its entropy and drives the overall rise in entropy of the isolated system of A and B with d'q of heat transferred to B. Clipping the note that is always linked through my handle here at UD:
a] Clausius is the founder of the 2nd law, and the first standard example of an isolated system -- one that allows neither energy nor matter to flow in or out -- is instructive, given the "closed" subsystems [i.e. allowing energy to pass in or out] in it. Pardon the substitute for a real diagram, for now: Isol System: | | (A, at Thot) --> d'Q, heat --> (B, at T cold) | | b] Now, we introduce entropy change dS >/= d'Q/T . . . "Eqn" A.1 c] So, dSa >/= -d'Q/Th, and dSb >/= +d'Q/Tc, where Th > Tc d] That is, for system, dStot >/= dSa + dSb >/= 0, as Th > Tc . . . "Eqn" A.2 e] But, observe: the subsystems A and B are open to energy inflows and outflows, and the entropy of B RISES DUE TO THE IMPORTATION OF RAW ENERGY. f] The key point is that when raw energy enters a body, it tends to make its entropy rise . . . . [skipping over a marbles in boxes thought exercise that expands and explains this, drawing out a qualitative understanding of a range of thermodynamics phenomena ] . . . So, plainly, for the injection of energy to instead do predictably and consistently do something useful, it needs to be coupled to an energy conversion device. g] When such energy conversion devices, as in the cell, exhibit FSCI, the question of their origin becomes material, and in that context, their spontaneous origin is strictly logically possible but -- from the above -- negligibly different from zero probability on the gamut of the observed cosmos. (And, kindly note: the cell is an energy importer with an internal energy converter. That is, the appropriate entity in the model is B and onward B' below. Presumably as well, the prebiotic soup would have been energy importing, and so materialistic chemical evolutionary scenarios therefore have the challenge to credibly account for the origin of the FSCI-rich energy converting mechanisms in the cell relative to Monod's "chance + necessity" [cf also Plato's remarks] only.
In short, merely observing that the earth etc are open to mass and energy inflows does not solve the underlying challenge of explaining the complex functionally specific organisation and associated information found in living systems. Nor is this issue exactly news. As a leading spokesman for the NCSE for years, you had a duty of care to note and appropriately respond to the following from the very first technical ID work by Thaxton et al in 1984, TMLO, at the close of ch 7 (linked as a useful online reference, the whole book is online here as a PDF):
While the maintenance of living systems is easily rationalized in terms of thermodynamics, the origin of such living systems is quite another matter. Though the earth is open to energy flow from the sun, the means of converting this energy into the necessary work to build up living systems from simple precursors remains at present unspecified (see equation 7-17). The "evolution" from biomonomers of to fully functioning cells is the issue. Can one make the incredible jump in energy and organization from raw material and raw energy, apart from some means of directing the energy flow through the system? In Chapters 8 and 9 we will consider this question, limiting our discussion to two small but crucial steps in the proposed evolutionary scheme namely, the formation of protein and DNA from their precursors. It is widely agreed that both protein and DNA are essential for living systems and indispensable components of every living cell today.11 Yet they are only produced by living cells. Both types of molecules are much more energy and information rich than the biomonomers from which they form. Can one reasonably predict their occurrence given the necessary biomonomers and an energy source? Has this been verified experimentally? These questions will be considered . . .
The increasingly obvious disarray of OOL studies underscores that, for coming on thirty years since, no credible, empirically warranted model of OOL has emerged based on Darwin's warm little electrified pond or whatever "plausible" prebiotic environment du jour. Indeed, the field is ideologically propped up by the question-begging a priori imposition of the materialistic assumptions and assertions that this "must" have happened, and that it is somehow "anti-scientific" to question it, especially if -- shudder -- such an alternative might allow that hated Divine Foot in the door. And, the NCSE has been in the forefront of this imposition of ideological materialism dressed up in the holy lab coat. As well you know. So also, setting aside "open system" strawmen and "Creationist" bogeymen, the issue is not (a) what is a logical and physical bare possibility, but instead (b) what is sufficiently likely to happen as to be a practically observable outcome on the gamut of available resources. For parallel instance, nothing physical or logical prevents all the O2 molecules in the room where you read this from rushing to one end, leaving you gasping for breath, but the number of mixed microstates so overwhelms the number of clumped states, that with all but certainty, this will not happen once in the observed universe across its lifespan. Diffusion is effectively irreversible, absent an active intervention. And if we do see a room with that clumping, the best explanation would be design. Going beyond mere clumping, the organisation of chains of glyphs into coherent functional messages of 500 bits or more length on the gamut of our solar system is not blocked from happening spontaneously by logical or physical impossibility, but by the same issue of the overwhelming number of disorganised states relative to organised ones for such a clumped system. That is the context in which we need to lay aside the NCSE's favourite dismissive talking points and listen again seriously to what Wicken and Orgel had to say in 1979 and 1973 respectively:
Wicken, 1979: ‘Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [[i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [[originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [[“The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65. (Nb: “originally” is added to highlight that for self-replicating systems, the blue print can be built-in. "Selection" is plainly meant to bring in the concept of NATURAL selection, but of course such is questionable in an OOL context where there is no differential reproductive success at work, and thus it inadvertently highlights the primary context of selection: by deliberate, intelligent choice.)] Orgel, 1973: . . . In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [[The Origins of Life (John Wiley, 1973), p. 189.]
Now, Dr Matzke, I remember pointing this out to you before, and I do not find it a reasonable thing for you to keep on drumming out talking points that have long since been adequately answered. Please, do better than that. G'day GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{February 23, 2012
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"Life is a kinetically-dominated process, not a thermodynamically-dominated one." So it's not a violation of thermodynamics, it's a kinetic system. It's only the kinetics that violate thermodynamics. Take that fundies! I hold that there is no necessary violation of the 2nd. But with all due respect it's not a valid argument to claim that Barack is not the president, Obama is.Maus_{February 22, 2012
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The fact that Abel (mis)uses the infamous creationist Second Law of Thermodynamics argument, which even some of the wiser young-earth creationists have abandoned, is a huge point *against* Abel’s argument and competence, not an argument for his view. Ouch. Hey Nick, Should we take the NCSE's dealings with Gleick, and Scott's apparent justification of his actions (not to mention, passing off what very much looks like a forged document as the real deal) as an argument for or against the arguments and competence of NCSE leadership? ;)nullasalus_{February 22, 2012
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The law of biogenesis still rules the natural.Blue_Savannah_{February 22, 2012
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So entropy, instead of being the universal principle of degradation that nothing in the universe can escape the clutches of for any extended period of time, in the hands of neo-Darwinists, entropy, suddenly, magically becomes either the driving force for neo-Darwinism, or is a supporting character for neo-Darwinism??? :) Why by golly I think I may have just seen the last bit of reason completely leave neo-Darwinian thought! :) I know this is probably beneath your dignity Nick, seeing as you must now save the entire world from Global Warming (on top of your already pressing duties insuring school children are lopsidedly indoctrinated into neo-Darwinian thought),, but I must really ask, Exactly what is your empirical evidence that falsifies Abel's null hypothesis?
Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information - Abel, Trevors Excerpt: Shannon information theory measures the relative degrees of RSC and OSC. Shannon information theory cannot measure FSC. FSC is invariably associated with all forms of complex biofunction, including biochemical pathways, cycles, positive and negative feedback regulation, and homeostatic metabolism. The algorithmic programming of FSC, not merely its aperiodicity, accounts for biological organization. No empirical evidence exists of either RSC of OSC ever having produced a single instance of sophisticated biological organization. Organization invariably manifests FSC rather than successive random events (RSC) or low-informational self-ordering phenomena (OSC).,,, Testable hypotheses about FSC What testable empirical hypotheses can we make about FSC that might allow us to identify when FSC exists? In any of the following null hypotheses [137], demonstrating a single exception would allow falsification. We invite assistance in the falsification of any of the following null hypotheses: Null hypothesis #1 Stochastic ensembles of physical units cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function. Null hypothesis #2 Dynamically-ordered sequences of individual physical units (physicality patterned by natural law causation) cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function. Null hypothesis #3 Statistically weighted means (e.g., increased availability of certain units in the polymerization environment) giving rise to patterned (compressible) sequences of units cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function. Null hypothesis #4 Computationally successful configurable switches cannot be set by chance, necessity, or any combination of the two, even over large periods of time. We repeat that a single incident of nontrivial algorithmic programming success achieved without selection for fitness at the decision-node programming level would falsify any of these null hypotheses. This renders each of these hypotheses scientifically testable. We offer the prediction that none of these four hypotheses will be falsified. http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29 The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency - Dr David L. Abel - November 2010 Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.” http://www-qa.scitopics.com/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Insufficiency.html The Law of Physicodynamic Incompleteness - David L. Abel - August 2011 Summary: “The Law of Physicodynamic Incompleteness” states that inanimate physicodynamics is completely inadequate to generate, or even explain, the mathematical nature of physical interactions (the purely formal laws of physics and chemistry). The Law further states that physicodynamic factors cannot cause formal processes and procedures leading to sophisticated function. Chance and necessity alone cannot steer, program or optimize algorithmic/computational success to provide desired non-trivial utility. http://www.scitopics.com/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Incompleteness.html The GS (genetic selection) Principle – David L. Abel – 2009 Excerpt: Stunningly, information has been shown not to increase in the coding regions of DNA with evolution. Mutations do not produce increased information. Mira et al (65) showed that the amount of coding in DNA actually decreases with evolution of bacterial genomes, not increases. This paper parallels Petrov’s papers starting with (66) showing a net DNA loss with Drosophila evolution (67). Konopka (68) found strong evidence against the contention of Subba Rao et al (69, 70) that information increases with mutations. The information content of the coding regions in DNA does not tend to increase with evolution as hypothesized. Konopka also found Shannon complexity not to be a suitable indicator of evolutionary progress over a wide range of evolving genes. Konopka’s work applies Shannon theory to known functional text. Kok et al. (71) also found that information does not increase in DNA with evolution. As with Konopka, this finding is in the context of the change in mere Shannon uncertainty. The latter is a far more forgiving definition of information than that required for prescriptive information (PI) (21, 22, 33, 72). It is all the more significant that mutations do not program increased PI. Prescriptive information either instructs or directly produces formal function. No increase in Shannon or Prescriptive information occurs in duplication. What the above papers show is that not even variation of the duplication produces new information, not even Shannon “information.” http://www.bioscience.org/2009/v14/af/3426/3426.pdf “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.(that is a net 'fitness gain' within a 'stressed' environment i.e. remove the stress from the environment and the parent strain is always more 'fit') http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Michael Behe talks about the preceding paper on this podcast: Michael Behe: Challenging Darwin, One Peer-Reviewed Paper at a Time - December 2010 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-12-23T11_53_46-08_00 Where's the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q-PBeQELzT4pkgxB2ZOxGxwv6ynOixfzqzsFlCJ9jrw/edit
cue music and verse for you Nick:
4-Him - Can't Get Past The Evidence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiRQxEOWdDw Romans 8:18-21 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
bornagain77_{February 22, 2012
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The fact that Abel (mis)uses the infamous creationist Second Law of Thermodynamics argument, which even some of the wiser young-earth creationists have abandoned, is a huge point *against* Abel's argument and competence, not an argument for his view. Ouch. Life is a kinetically-dominated process, not a thermodynamically-dominated one.
The Driving Force for Life's Emergence: Kinetic and Thermodynamic Considerations ADDY PROSS Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 643, Beer Sheva, 84105, Israel Received 26 December 2001. Accepted 23 September 2002. Available online 3 December 2002. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2003.3178 Abstract The principles that govern the emergence of life from non-life remain a subject of intense debate. The evolutionary paradigm built up over the last 50 years, that argues that the evolutionary driving force is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, continues to be promoted by some, while severely criticized by others. If the thermodynamic drive toward ever-increasing entropy is not what drives the evolutionary process, then what does? In this paper, we analyse this long-standing question by building on Eigen's “replication first” model for life's emergence, and propose an alternative theoretical framework for understanding life's evolutionary driving force. Its essence is that life is a kinetic phenomenon that derives from the kinetic consequences of autocatalysis operating on specific biopolymeric systems, and this is demonstrably true at all stages of life's evolution — from primal to advanced life forms. Life's unique characteristics — its complexity, energy-gathering metabolic systems, teleonomic character, as well as its abundance and diversity, derive directly from the proposition that from a chemical perspective the replication reaction is an extreme expression of kinetic control, one in which thermodynamic requirements have evolved to play a supporting, rather than a directing, role. The analysis leads us to propose a new sub-division within chemistry — replicative chemistry. A striking consequence of this kinetic approach is that Darwin's principle of natural selection: that living things replicate, and therefore evolve, may be phrased more generally: that certain replicating things can evolve, and may therefore become living. This more general formulation appears to provide a simple conceptual link between animate and inanimate matter.
[Cue some Christian rock apologetics song on youtube by ba77]NickMatzke_UD_{February 22, 2012
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We see yet again that the attempt to explain away Life's Origin as the lucky draw of a cosmic lottery underestimates the difficulty. A lottery can be explained...The emergence of complex information from chaos has no physical explanation.APM_{February 22, 2012
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