Mimicking natural selection in chemical systems

[simonh]

I don't have access to the article, but this sounds a bit like autocatalytic sets. Can anyone with access comment on that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_set

[billiam]

It's a strange formulation. I think the point is that significant inputs of energy or chemical potential are needed to make chemical systems behave like biological systems in terms of the permanent, replicable changes that Darwin called natural selection. That's how you get disequilibrium in such usually reversible mechanisms, which the authors imply is necessary for the origin of life. I may be missing a larger point, but these energy inputs are assumed in most origin of life theories, from Urey's lightning in a swamp to more recent clay replication ideas.

[hsnewman]

Living matter is a chemical system too.