University of Groningen
Enabling Darwinian evolution in chemical replicators
Mattia, Elio
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2017
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Mattia, E. (2017). Enabling Darwinian evolution in chemical replicators. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
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Stellingen
behorende bij het proefschrift
“Enabling Darwinian evolution in chemical replicators”
van
Elio Mattia
1) Studying how life originated is likely to be a highly ambitious endeavor, due to the current technical inaccessibility of the distant past. Current research should therefore be dubbed on the “origins of life”, rather than on the “origin of life”.
2) Systems thinking is steadily gaining momentum and involves getting rid of the inner-outer dualism by excluding the possibility of explaining phenomena with the aid of external causes.
3) Research on chemical evolution should focus on the perturbation of dynamic kinetically stable (DKS) states.
4) The fields of systems chemistry and the origins of life are inextricably dependent upon mathematical models of living entities, e.g., phase/configuration diagrams and (M,R)-systems. Any communication barriers between the theoreticians and the experimentalists should therefore be broken and new tight formal cooperation should be promoted in order for these fields to develop.
5) Although financial systems are resilient to reaching DKS conditions, analogies to DKS theory can be drawn and pairs of opposing forces, such as the dualism between greed and economic needs, can be identified in societies with very different financial regulations.
6) Darwinian evolution is an emergent phenomenon that cannot be predicted in a bottom-up approach from its underlying properties. However, we do witness it (e.g., through archaeological studies), therefore we can guess its underlying properties in a top-down approach, and verify whether the latter give rise to Darwinian evolution when combined in the same experimental system.
7) Exponential replication could be a non-necessary feature for life to sustain itself, but it very likely played a key role for its emergence. This notion makes exponential replication worthwhile to study in depth (Chapter 2).
8) Far-from-equilibrium conditions are very likely not sufficient for any form of life as we know it to arise and thrive, but they certainly are necessary. As a corollary, studies on chemical evolution should always be carried out in a far-from-equilibrium regime that involves continuous production and destruction of replicating species (Chapter 3).
9) Being able to quantify DKS in chemical systems, a nearly uncharted territory, would be a key milestone towards grasping the complexities of far-from-equilibrium states.
10) It is more fascinating to be able to pose the right questions than to pretend to be giving the right answers.
11) The trajectory of anyone’s Ph.D. studies is an emergent result of many underlying factors, including: theoretical knowledge of the student, availability of funds, motivation of the student, four-year time constraint, accessibility of instruments, dedication of the supervisor, aid from supporting staff, commitment of the student, dedication to long term research, style of the cooperation with the supervisor, work stability and prospective work expectations, recognition of the results by the supervisor and by the community, technical skills of the student, and the type of music played in the lab.
12) Given the role of creativity for scientific progress, having the freedom to extensively read the literature and develop and discuss new ideas in the first year of anyone’s PhD is extremely desirable and should be assigned a formal space within a PhD trajectory.
13) Much like the evolution of biological organisms, the evolution of ideas depends on the environment.
14) The process by which theories are formed is extremely creative, largely undocumented and peculiarly nonlinear. As a result, chemical intuition often comes before a quantitative, exhaustive explanation of the systems under investigation. This process is hard to plan, yet extremely important for the advancement of Science. Hence scientists should be granted the necessary time to develop their ideas throughout their careers.
15) Serendipities are less serendipitous than commonly believed, as they are seldom the result of crossing just one fortuitous tipping point, but also depend on the culmination of prolonged evolution of thoughts and on being sufficiently mindful to detect and process the implications of lucky circumstances.
