The Universal Evolution and the Origin of LIfe

The origin of life occupies a very important place in the study of the evolution. Its liminal location between life and non-life poses special challenges to researchers who study this subject. Current approaches in studying the origin and evolution of early life are reductive: they either reduce the domain of non-life to the domain of life or vice versa. This contribution seeks to provide a perspective that would avoid reductionism of any kind. Its goal is to outline a frame that would include both domains and their respective evolutions as its particular cases. The study examines the main theoretical perspectives on the origin and evolution of early life and provides a constructive critique of these perspectives. An objective view require viewing an object or a phenomenon from all available points of view. The goal of this contribution is not to prove the current perspectives wrong and to deny their achievements. It seeks to provide an angle that would be sufficiently wide and would allow synthesizing current perspectives for a comprehensive and objective interpretation of the origin end evolution of early life. In other words, it seeks to outline a frame for an objective view that will help understand life’s place within the universe.

💡 Research Summary

The paper critiques the prevailing reductionist approaches to the origin of life (OOL), arguing that they all suffer from a common “privileged‑function” bias that reverses causality, relies on subjective assumptions, and invokes untestable randomness. After surveying a wide spectrum of life definitions—from Sagan’s evolutionary system to bio‑semiotic and autopoietic concepts—the author highlights the shared emphasis on autonomy and open‑ended evolution. The review then categorizes existing OOL models into four “privileged‑function” families: gene‑first (RNA‑World, Clay‑World), metabolism‑first (managed metabolism, thermal‑vent), membrane‑first (compartmentalization), and continuity approaches that ground biology in physics, self‑organization, and entropy production (e.g., Goldenfeld‑Woese, Jeremy England).

Each family is shown to elevate a single biological feature (replication, metabolism, or compartmentalization) to a status that cannot logically emerge from a lower‑level system without presupposing the very property it seeks to explain. This circular reasoning, the author argues, makes the theories tautological. Moreover, the foundational premises are presented as self‑evident rather than being justified through logical deduction or empirical testing, rendering them arbitrary and subjective. The reliance on stochastic events—“the mother of all accidents”—is also problematized because true randomness cannot be demonstrated, and deterministic developmental biases may underlie observed variation.

To overcome these shortcomings, the paper proposes a “universal evolution” framework that simultaneously encompasses non‑life and life as particular cases of a broader evolutionary process. Such a framework would require that all hypotheses be evaluated against the same logical and empirical standards, avoiding the privileging of any single function and eliminating the need for unverified random chance. By integrating insights from chemistry, physics, information theory, and systems biology, the author envisions a more objective, comprehensive perspective that situates life’s emergence within the universal dynamics of the cosmos.