2.7 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assembly theory | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_theory | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T11:09:27.671855+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Critical views == Chemist Steven A. Benner has publicly criticized various aspects of assembly theory. Benner argues that it is transparently false that non-living systems, and with no life intervention, cannot contain molecules that are complex but people would be misled in thinking that because it was published in Nature journals after peer review, these papers must be right. A paper published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution concludes that "the hype around Assembly Theory reflects rather unfavorably both on the authors and the scientific publication system in general". The author concludes that what "assembly theory really does is to detect and quantify bias caused by higher-level constraints in some well-defined rule-based worlds"; one "can use assembly theory to check whether something unexpected is going on in a very broad range of computational model worlds or universes". Another paper authored by a group of chemists and planetary scientists published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface demonstrated that abiotic chemical processes have the potential to form crystal structures of great complexity – values exceeding the proposed abiotic/biotic divide of MA index = 15. They conclude that "while the proposal of a biosignature based on a molecular assembly index of 15 is an intriguing and testable concept, the contention that only life can generate molecular structures with MA index ≥ 15 is in error". Two papers published in 2024 argue that assembly theory provides no insights beyond those already available using algorithmic complexity and Claude Shannon's information theory.
== See also == List of interstellar and circumstellar molecules Smallest grammar problem Word problem for groups
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Cronin, Leroy; Walker, Sara Imari (3 June 2016). "Beyond prebiotic chemistry". Science. 352 (6290): 1174–1175. Bibcode:2016Sci...352.1174C. doi:10.1126/science.aaf6310. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 27257242. S2CID 206649123. Cronin, Leroy; Krasnogor, Natalio; Davis, Benjamin G.; Alexander, Cameron; Robertson, Neil; Steinke, Joachim H. G.; Schroeder, Sven L. M.; Khlobystov, Andrei N.; Cooper, Geoff; Gardner, Paul M.; Siepmann, Peter (2006). "The imitation game—a computational chemical approach to recognizing life". Nature Biotechnology. 24 (10): 1203–1206. doi:10.1038/nbt1006-1203. ISSN 1546-1696. PMID 17033651. S2CID 4664573. Ball, Philip (4 May 2023). "A New Theory for the Assembly of Life in the Universe". Quanta Magazine.