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Incidentally, when we were going down the Shannon-Weaver path in investigating abiogenesis, self-replication was not on the menu for research - the issues were the rise of information (the successful communications itself), autonomy, semiosis and complexity.

I didn't notice that it wasn't on the list. Now that I think about it, although it's certainly characteristic of the life I'm familiar with, perhaps it's not needed. What is really needed is self-assembly. Or maybe this shows how premature our questions are, if we don't even have all the factors nailed down.

Anyway, I know you want to keep the conversation limited to natural life, whatever that may be, so I won't comment further along these lines.

Thank you so very much for your reply!

I didn't notice that it wasn't on the list. Now that I think about it, although it's certainly characteristic of the life I'm familiar with, perhaps it's not needed. What is really needed is self-assembly. Or maybe this shows how premature our questions are, if we don't even have all the factors nailed down.

Well said, PatrickHenry!!! Self-assembly is the common thread among the components we were investigating: information (successful communications), autonomy, semiosis, complexity.

The difference between self-replication and self-assembly can be conceptualized in the development of an embryo. If the "objective" were simply replication the cells would multiply only themselves, there'd be no machinery, no organism. To the eye, the resulting "organism" might "look" like a tumor. Instead there is a cooperation - a will to live - whereby the organism, as you say, self-assembles.

In the abiogenesis "RNA world" model, as Rocha said, it would require a toggling back and forth between autonomous/non-autonomous states to give rise to symbols (semiosis) in support of self-organizing complexity.

Even so, the objective of successful communication [information] in nature appears to be the will to live. And I would aver that we do not have a complete abiogenesis model until there exists a plausible theory for the origin of information in the universe. There are a few possibilites we had not yet explored - a universal or inter-dimensional field, fluctuations in the geometry that gives rise to strings, harmonics in the universe. Moreover, all of these may be related.

So sadly, I must agree that the other part of your statement is likely also true, i.e. ” Or maybe this shows how premature our questions are, if we don't even have all the factors nailed down.” Myriad biologists and chemists are approaching the characteristics of emerging life using laboratory methods - meanwhile theorists like Rocha and Kauffman are approaching the structures of emerging life mathematically.

Without agreement as to the root question - ”in nature, what is life? - either side is liable to make a declaration of victory unacceptable to the other.