Padgett, John F. “2. Autocatalysis in Chemistry and the Origin of Life.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets , pp. 31-69. Princeton University Press, 2012.
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The three chapters on autocatalysis are foundational for the rest of the volume. This does not mean that the principles and mechanisms of organizational genesis and evolution discovered in the empirical case studies can be derived from these chapters on autocatalysis. Our empirical case studies of evolutionary dynamics in multiple networks contain their own discoveries, which can stand on their own. But “foundational” does mean that these three chapters on autocatalysis explain why there are organizations in the first place, capable of evolving as described in the case studies. Our answer is that organizations are one form of life. Human social organization has particular features—in particular, language—that set it apart from other forms of life. But it is still one form of life. As such, it shares with other forms the overarching principles and dynamics of life in general. It is these that explain the existence of the organization, human and otherwise. We claim that the over-arching self-organizational principles of life are largely (though perhaps not entirely) captured in the chemical concept of autocatalysis. We further claim—consistent with but extending Darwin in a relational way—that evolution, biological and social, emerges out of concatenations and selections of multiple reproductive autocatalyses in co-evolutionary feedback with each other.