Ecomeeting - December 2025: Thermodynamics vs. Natural Selection and Algorithmic Chemistry of the Origin of Life.
This Ecomeeting follows the seminar the speaker gave a few weeks ago, which sparked strong interest and potential collaborations among several members of the institute.
The meeting will address two levels of abstraction. First, we will discuss the relationship between thermodynamics and natural selection. Since Boltzmann, many researchers have argued that Darwinian selection must rest on statistical and thermodynamic principles. Despite multiple attempts to formalize this connection, the problem remains open. As introductory material, the speaker suggests reading Maximum Power in Evolution Ecology and Economics and Eric Smith’s Thermodynamics of Natural Selection I.
The second topic concerns algorithmic chemistry as a framework for studying the origin of life. This line of research, initiated in the 1990s by Walter Fontana and Leo W. Buss, proposes artificial chemical systems to identify fundamental organizational principles. Their work, exemplified by What Would Be Conserved if "the Tape Were Played Twice", inspired the development of Combinatory Chemistry (CC) by Germán Kruszewski and Tomáš Mikolov, presented in Emergence of Self-Reproducing Metabolisms as Recursive Algorithms in an Artificial Chemistry. The speaker will introduce the CC model and discuss its relevance to thermodynamics and natural selection.
The goal is to foster potential collaborations on CC and to explore the possibility of establishing a continuing discussion forum on these topics.
This Talk will be broadcasted in the following zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89027654460?pwd=Wg9TYMPqqP2ipfj2JVvEagmzaTw29c.1
Contact details:
Miguel Alvarez Contact form