Walker, Sara Imari. “Top-down causation and the rise of information in the emergence of life.” Information 5, no. 3 (2014): 424-439.
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Biological systems represent a unique class of physical systems in how they process and manage information. This suggests that changes in the flow and distribution of information played a prominent role in the origin of life. Here I review and expand on an emerging conceptual framework suggesting that the origin of life may be identified as a transition in causal structure and information flow, and detail some of the implications for understanding the early stages chemical evolution.