When British naturalist Charles Darwin sketched out his theory of evolution in the 1859 book "On the Origin of Species" - proposing that biological species change over time through the acquisition of traits that favor survival and reproduction - it provoked a revolution in scientific thought.
Even when reading the paper there was very very little meat. It’s conjecture built upon conjecture but very little of it seems to stand on its own for me. It’s another theoretical framework that is nice to write about but doesn’t actually even try to explain much.
Their argument seems to be that there is selection working on everything to increase complexity. Even cursorily there seems to be major problems with such a conjecture. They feel to me like they confuse persistence with drive.
A thing that lasts longer is more likely to be observed by someone born at a random point in time. This is persistence. This doesn’t mean that things try to get to a state where they last longer, particularly not chemical structures!
This reminds me a lot of that assembly theory paper that came out a week or so ago and was (in my opinion deservedly) battered by most reputable evolutionary biologists.
I thought they defined persistence as literally the length of time an entity exists. There are many ways to persis under their model.
For non biological systems, it’s about being in a energetically favorable state for the environment. For example, while many chemicals will form and break down quickly as their environment changes, with form more stable structures that persist through the shifting environments. These structures are selected for as the basis of potentially new reactions and chemicals.
I haven’t given chemistry much thought, but the idea holds pretty well for biological systems.
Ultimately, you’re right this is totally a thought piece. However, it’s great discussion material.