Stuart Kauffman discusses the emergence of life in the universe, auto-catalytic sets, DNA structure, molecular catalysis, origins of metabolism, Darwin's warm pond hypothesis, TAP equation, evolution's creativity, economics unpredictability, autocatalytic closure, information conservation, and an experiment mixing fungi with bacteria.
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Autocatalytic Sets and Life's Origin
The origin of life likely involved a phase transition to an autocatalytic set, where molecules mutually catalyze each other's formation.
This emergence is an expected outcome given rising molecular diversity and reaction complexity in the universe.
insights INSIGHT
Small Molecule Autocatalytic Sets
Small molecule autocatalytic sets have been computationally found in all 6700 prokaryotes, suggesting a fundamental form of early life.
These sets function without DNA, RNA, or proteins, acting as proto-metabolisms with catalytic closure and energy pathways.
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Theory of the Adjacent Possible
The theory of the adjacent possible explains that as diversity of things grows, new combinations produce explosive, hyperbolic growth in complexity.
This combinatorial explosion underpins the expected phase transition from simple molecules to life and ongoing evolution.
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Jim talks with Stuart Kauffman about the ideas in the recent paper he co-authored with Andrea Roli, "Is the Emergence of Life an Expected Phase Transition in the Evolving Universe?" They discuss the fragmentation of the origins of life field, Pasteur's test of spontaneous generation, primitive soup, Watson & Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA, mutually catalyzing molecules, molecules as combinatorial objects, random catalysis, collectively autocatalytic sets, the origin of metabolism, composability elements, the earliest form of life, Darwin's warm little pond hypothesis, the theory of the adjacent possible, the TAP equation, why small molecule reproduction will be abundant in the universe, the Drake equation, Kantian wholes, the function of a part, autocatalytic closure, constraint closure, cycles of work, downward causation, information conservation vs the error catastrophe, exaptation, the new adjacent possible, why evolution is unendingly creative & mathematically unpredictable, what this implies about economics, Arrow-Debreu competitive general equilibrium, the impossibility of well-founded expectations, why we can't have dominion over the ongoing biosphere, an open-ended experiment to mix fungi with bacteria on sterilized sand, and much more.
Episode Transcript
JRS EP18 - Stuart Kauffman on Complexity, Biology & T.A.P.
"Is the Emergence of Life an Expected Phase Transition in the Evolving Universe?", by Stuart Kauffman & Andrew Roli
"Chemical Evolution: Life is a logical consequence of known chemical principles operating on the atomic composition of the universe," by Melvin Calvin
"Autocatalytic chemical networks at the origin of metabolism," by Joana Xavier, Stuart Kauffman, et. al.
JRS EP 167 - Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life
JRS EP 171 - Bruce Damer Part 2: The Origins of Life - Implications
JRS EP 138 - Brian Arthur on the Nature of Technology
JRS EP 157 - Terrence Deacon on Mind's Emergence from Matter
"A third transition in science?", by Stuart Kauffman & Andrea Roli
Stuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruit fly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he rose to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1987–1992.
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