The Nature of Life and Its Emergence

The podcast explores the complex question of what defines life and how it emerges from non-life. The speaker highlights the challenges in establishing a clear definition of life, noting that traditional criteria based on replication and metabolism often lead to ambiguities, such as the status of viruses and fire. The focus shifts to assembly theory, developed by Sarah Walker and her collaborators, which posits that life is characterized by the complexity and history of its molecular assembly. This theory suggests that life is the process of creating complex structures, as evidenced by the distinct assembly index—molecules from living organisms consistently exceed a threshold of complexity, indicating a significant difference between living and non-living entities.