Causal Organization Prior to and Promoting Self-Replication in a Catalytic Model of the Origin of Life
Abstract
Agents that exert causal power in the world are thought to be the product of selection among diverse replicators. Whether organized causal structure can arise before replication and influence its emergence remains unclear. Here we examine this question in the Graded Autocatalysis Replication Domain (GARD), a model of catalytic molecular assemblies capable of compositional self-reproduction. We find that causal emergence - irreducible predictive information generated by the system as a whole - exhibits punctuated dynamics associated with self-replication. Early causal emergence predicts subsequent self-replication more accurately than established measures of molecular dynamics. Moreover, manipulating molecular assemblies to increase causal emergence raises the persistence and abundance of self-replication, whereas the opposite is true for interventions that decrease causal emergence, indicating a functional control knob. These results show that causal organization can precede the appearance of replicators and can influence their subsequent dynamics. They suggest that increases in integrated causality can shape the organization of active media before evolutionary dynamics begin.
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BibTeX
@misc{pigozzi2026causal,
title = {{Causal Organization Prior to and Promoting Self-Replication in a Catalytic Model of the Origin of Life}},
author = {Federico Pigozzi and Michael Levin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.28250},
eprint = {2607.28250},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28250},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Causal Organization Prior to and Promoting Self-Replication in a Catalytic Model of the Origin of Life
AU - Federico Pigozzi
AU - Michael Levin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.28250
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28250
AB - Agents that exert causal power in the world are thought to be the product of selection among diverse replicators. Whether organized causal structure can arise before replication and influence its emergence remains unclear. Here we examine this question in the Graded Autocatalysis Replication Domain (GARD), a model of catalytic molecular assemblies capable of compositional self-reproduction. We find that causal emergence - irreducible predictive information generated by the system as a whole - exhibits punctuated dynamics associated with self-replication. Early causal emergence predicts subsequent self-replication more accurately than established measures of molecular dynamics. Moreover, manipulating molecular assemblies to increase causal emergence raises the persistence and abundance of self-replication, whereas the opposite is true for interventions that decrease causal emergence, indicating a functional control knob. These results show that causal organization can precede the appearance of replicators and can influence their subsequent dynamics. They suggest that increases in integrated causality can shape the organization of active media before evolutionary dynamics begin.
ER -