David L. Abel, editor of The First Gene, writes in Chapter 8, “The Birth of Protocells”:
Abstract: Could a composome, chemoton, or RNA vesicular protocell come to life in the absence of formal instructions, controls and regulation? Redundant, low-informational selfordering is not organization. Organization must be programmed. Intertwined circular constraints (e.g. complex hypercylces), even with negative and positive feedback, do not steer physicochemical reactions toward formal function or metabolic success. Complex hypercycles quickly and selfishly exhaust sequence and other phase spaces of potential metabolic resources.
Unwanted cross-reactions are invariably ignored in these celebrated models. Formal rules pertain to uncoerced (physiodynamically indeterminate) voluntary behavior. Laws describe and predict invariant physicodynamic interactions. Constraints and laws cannot program or steer physicality towards conceptual organization, computational success, pragmatic benefit, the goal of integrated holistic metabolism, or life. The formal controls and regulation observed in molecular biology are unique. Only constraints, not controls, are found in the inanimate physical world. Cybernetics should be the corner stone of any definition of life. All known life utilizes a mutable linear digital material symbol system (MSS) to represent and record programming decisions made in advance of any selectable phenotypic fitness. This fact is not undone by additional epigenetic formal controls and multi-layered Prescriptive Information (PI) instantiated into diverse molecular devices and machines.