Analyzing the Origins of Life from a System Architect’s Perspective

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

I am conducting personal research on the origins of life from the perspective of a system architect. My premise is that cells were born from simple organic matter on Earth 4 billion years ago through chemical evolution. Additionally, I assume that this was not an event that happened due to a meteorite landing from space, but an event that occurred on Earth. Furthermore, I also assume that it is known from various scientific researches that simple organic matter could be synthesized in various places on Earth.

Here, I will succinctly note the key points that I believe are crucial within my hypothesis up until this point.

1. There were countless pools of water of varying sizes on Earth. These had different environmental conditions, and each had a different soup of organic matter.
2. Often, the soups of organic matter would mix due to the water cycle system.
3. Within the soup of organic matter in the pools, there were areas with high viscosity, so the environment within one pool was not homogeneous. Hence, a variety of organic matter coexisted within one pool.
4. The mixing of various organic materials and the occurrence of new chemical reactions could occur due to the convection of water within the pool.
5. When a new organic matter was synthesized, there were times when, if luck was on their side, the new organic matter possessed an action that enhanced the mechanism that synthesized it. With the enhancement of the mechanism that is synthesized, the organic matter can be produced stably in large quantities.
6. The aforementioned luck occurred several times in various patterns, extending the synthesis pathways of organic matter. Thus, while the synthesis pathway is enhanced, it extends and can generate complex organic matter.
7. Areas of the organic soup with high viscosity are isolated or encapsulate the organic matter.
8. Often in the soup of organic matter, there are those with patterns the same as the branches of a domino fall as organic chemical reactions. If the conditions are right, a mechanism for multiplying by repeatedly branching can occur. Within these repetitions, there are instances where chemical reactions that produce the necessary ingredients for the repetition of chemical reactions while branching are mixed. As these coincidences accumulate, eventually, enough organic matter can be synthesized for branching and subsequent repeated processing. This could be the trigger for the birth of genes.
9. The high viscosity parts of the organic soup may have been separated and floated, or the soup of organic matter could have been encapsulated by some membrane, which enabled the exchange of organic matter while maintaining the structure all the way to distant pools.

Parts of the above hypothesis incorporate ideas from insights in different fields. The idea of the significance of areas with high viscosity is hinted at by the concept of tacit knowledge in philosophy of knowledge. In addition to structured explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge is unstructured knowledge that can’t be communicated to others in words. Also, the idea of the production of organic matter being enhanced and its pathway extended, is inspired by supply chains and value chains in economics. The idea of chemical changes akin to the branching of falling dominos is brought in from the concept of recursive programming. Furthermore, the idea of organic matter, encapsulated by a membrane, being stably transported far away utilizes the concept of encapsulation in software design.

If you are interested in this hypothesis, please refer to the preprint paper below. It summarizes the overall picture of my hypothesis, as well as the structure of the ecological systems I assumed, and the interdisciplinary strategy to elucidate the mystery of the origin of life.

“A Strategy for Exploring the Origins of Life: A Proposal for a Framework Based on the Essential Structure of Ecological Systems”

https://osf.io/fcbz7