Abstract
A central challenge in studies of the origin of life is that we don’t know whether life is 'just' very complex chemistry, or if there is something fundamentally distinct about living matter. What’s at stake here is not merely an issue of complexification; the question of whether life is fully reducible to just the rules chemistry and physics (albeit in a very complicated manner) or is perhaps something different, forces us to assess precisely what it is that we mean by the very nature of the question of the emergence of life. I argue that if we are going to treat the origin of life as a solvable scientific inquiry (which we certainly can and should), we must assume, at least on phenomenological grounds, that life is nontrivially different from nonlife. As such, a fully reductionist picture may be inadequate to address the emergence of life. The essay focuses on how treating the unique informational narrative of living systems as more than just complex chemistry may open up new avenues for research in investigations of the origin of life. I conclude with a discussion of the potential implications of such a phenomenological framework – if successful in elucidating the emergence of life as a well-defined transition – on our interpretation of life as a fundamental natural phenomenon.
Sara Imari Walker