Аннотация
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is
that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that
its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The
unique informational narrative of living systems suggests that life may be
characterized by context-dependent causal influences, and in particular, that
top-down (or downward) causation -- where higher-levels influence and constrain
the dynamics of lower-levels in organizational hierarchies - may be a major
contributor to the hierarchal structure of living systems. Here we propose that
the origin of life may correspond to a physical transition associated with a
fundamental shift in causal structure. The origin of life may therefore be
characterized by a transition from bottom-up to top-down causation, mediated by
a reversal in the dominant direction of the flow of information from lower to
higher levels of organization (bottom-up), to that from higher to lower levels
of organization (top-down). Such a transition may be akin to a thermodynamic
phase transition, with the crucial distinction that determining which phase
(nonlife or life) a given system is in requires dynamical information and
therefore can only be inferred by identifying causal relationships. We discuss
one potential measure of such a transition, which is amenable to laboratory
study, and how the proposed mechanism corresponds to the onset of the unique
mode of (algorithmic) information processing characteristic of living systems.
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