Juan Rivas-Santisteban

The emergence of life from non-living matter remains one of the most profound unresolved questions in natural philosophy. Classical models derived from the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis assume a gradual (sequential), selective assembly of biological precursors. Yet, for more than a century, all experimental efforts in this direction have failed in their attempt to achieve material abiogenesis. May be that this view is paradoxical when trying to explain how life arises without preexisting coordinated, complex structures - as they should be a product of selection before life itself could be able to control inheritability. Here, I elaborate on the possibility of a nonadaptive, nonsequential abiogenesis, in which life-grade complexity emerges spontaneously, ungoverned by natural selection, through contingent coalescence under excess capabilities. The Price equation, as a mathematical tool, can help assisting our thinking on the evolvability of selection itself. Selection, rather than a precondition for life, is best understood as the covariance between trait value and fitness (inheritability of fitness), a quantity that itself evolves. Prior to abiogenesis, this covariance should be effectively zero, then selection begins to govern and purify the number of feasible interactions among the primeval components. This could be achieved by a chemical system without a code. By releasing abiogenesis from gradualist idealisations, this model may provide a new theoretical foundation for interrogating life’s origins.