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Leroy Cronin

Dear Alyssa,

Thanks for your comments. Assembly theory will work for proteins and protein folding - indeed the evolved infrastructure of biology that takes advantage of the current trajectories in 'folding space' can be traced using assembly theory. I'm working on the framework that this will fit into with my team from genes and protein sequences, then 3D structures.

Assembly theory explains how you can get access to new structures based on the history of previous structures - there is no free lunch - the future is constrained by the past. Assembly theory already takes this into account.

I enjoyed your essay BTW and I'm interested how you make the decision, as an observer, to switch space. When you switch a physical space you need to ensure you have the history of that space correctly accounted for since you will be exploring one structure with another and the contexts / origins will be wrong. We can of course observe common paterns in complex systems but I think this is because the assembly spaces are similar and similar dynamics are expressed, but that is the extent of the overlap.

I hope this helps! Great to hear from you!

Lee

Dear Simon,

Thanks for these comments. You are right. I'm developing assembly theory to go way beyond biology but look at the intrinsic historhy associated with a given configuration in a state space. This will apply to everything; quantum states; letters; social systems and so on. I'm working up a general representation of the theory and I aim this will replace our confused notion of 'complexity' rather looking at hwo assembled the universe is and how much assembly information is required to get to that configuration. I'm writing up the theory now and we have one or two experimental results that show how this theory can lead to new insights, understanding and predictions.

Thanks,

Lee

Essay Abstract

The Universe appears to be inherently unpredictable, not just for fundamental reasons from the limits of mathematical proof, or the consequences of quantum mechanics, but also due to how complex systems express or develop new rules at higher levels which emerge independently of their lower levels. However, most of these complex systems are still simple, and have few constraints which places limits on the nature of the unpredictability of the dynamics shown by these systems. Living systems are not only able to exhibit more unpredictable behaviors, but these are intrinsically more novel than the unpredictable behaviors associated with the abiotic universe. In this essay I discuss how a new theory I have been developing, assembly theory, can be used to identify if a given object has been constructed or not by exploring the constraints required for the object to form from undirected or random processes. I try to explain that the more assembled a given a system is, the more of the possible state space is accessible, and hence how both unpredictable and capable of generating novelty the system is. Finally, I argue that living systems are also intrinsically unpredictable in terms of their ability to express novelty and outline a scale of assembly which might provide a way to distinguish living systems from non-living systems.

Author Bio

Leroy (Lee) Cronin is the Regius Professor of Chemistry in Glasgow. His research has four main aims 1) the construction of an artificial life form / work out how inorganic chemistry transitioned to biology / searching for new life forms; 2) the digitization of chemistry; and 3) the use of artificial intelligence in chemistry including the construction of 'wet' chemical computers and to self-assemble a chemical brain; 4) The exploration of complexity and information in chemistry. He runs a team of around 60 people funded by grants from the UK EPSRC, US DARPA, Templeton, Google.

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