Death  Toward the Physics of  Toward the Physics of

Introduction

What is the role of the ``process of death'' in evolution of the universe and the creation of complexity? This is the question this paper seeks to address. The concept of death we are addressing here is a more generic notion than just the death of living things, rather we are including in the concept of death, a more thermodynamic-like death of an organized entity, such as the death of an atom, a death of a star, and a death of a empire.

There is the age old question of how does new phenomena, such as life, arise. This question has been investigated and discussed for centuries. The area of the science of complexity is starting to address this question by understanding the general processes underlying the production of novelty. Perspectives on natural processes exemplified by the work of Feigenbaum [5], Smolin [18], Prigogine [15], Crutchfield [4], and Langton [11] are starting to lead to new explanations on how novelty is created. More specific to the creation of life, the work of Kauffman [8,9], Fontana and Buss [7] have begun to shed some light on some the underlying processes that must have taken place.

Kauffman's beginning of a theory of increasing complexity for life will be primarily assumed in this paper. This theory has concentrated on emergence of complexity of life through the notion of autocatalytic sets, but demonstrates that that underlying phenomena is generic many other physical processes characterized by boolean networks. Kauffman primarily assumed in the notion of autocatalytic sets that there are a set of reactants in sufficient quantities to start the autocatalytic process off. Kauffman only briefly discusses the creation of pre-autocatalytic organic molecules. The reactants themselves are simpler than the emerging process of life, but they are complex in their own right. Smith and Szathmary [17], taking on a broader range of the evolutionary steps of life, have outlined in detail the probable steps in the evolution of life.

In the evolution from pre-life to life, the detailed steps are complex. However, the question of how the building of prebiotic complexity occurred, focuses the problem of finding mechanisms for creation of diverse and complex molecules in sufficient quantities via a non-reproductive environment. Kauffman's autocatalytic sets provide an essential process in the formation of complex molecules, but does not provide an explicit link to essential notions of the preservation and accumulation of novelty to increase complexity in simpler environments. We hypothesize that one process essential this increase of complexity is the ``process of death''.

9/9/1997