A major challenge when describing the origin of life is to explain "how instructional information control systems emerge naturally and spontaneously from mere molecular dynamics". So far, no one has clarified how information control emerged ab initio and how primitive control mechanisms in life might have evolved, becoming increasingly refined. Based on recent experimental results showing that chemical computation does not require the presence of life-related chemistry, we elucidate the origin and early evolution of information handling by chemical automata, from information processing (computation) to information storage (memory) and information transmission (communication) and later digital messengers, covering at the same time its syntactic, semantic and pragmatic flavors. In contrast to other theories that assume the existence of initial complex structures, our representation starts from trivial self-replicators whose interaction leads to the arising of more powerful molecular machines. By describing precisely the primordial transitions in chemistry-based computation, our framework is capable of explaining the above-mentioned gaps and can be translated to other models of computation, which allow us to explore biological phenomena at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Being compatible with the free energy principle, we have developed a computational enactivist theoretical framework that could be able to describe from the origin of life to high-level cognition, as if it were a purely constructivist narrative. At the end of our manuscript, we propose some ways to extend our ideas, including experimental validation of our theory (both in vitro and in silico).

翻译：描述生命起源时面临的一个主要挑战是解释"指令性信息控制系统如何从单纯的分子动力学中自然且自发地涌现"。迄今为止，尚未有人阐明信息控制如何从最初开始出现，以及生命中的原始控制机制如何演化并逐渐完善。基于近期表明化学计算无需依赖生命相关化学的实验结果，我们阐明了化学自动机信息处理的起源与早期演化过程——从信息处理（计算）到信息存储（记忆）与信息传输（通信），直至后期的数字信使，同时涵盖其句法、语义及语用维度。与那些假设初始复杂结构存在的理论不同，我们的表征从简单的自复制体出发，其相互作用催生了更强大的分子机器。通过精确描述基于化学的计算中的原始转变，我们的框架能够解释上述空白，并可转化为其他计算模型，从而允许我们在多时空尺度上探索生物现象。基于与自由能原理的兼容性，我们建立了可计算具身认知理论框架，该框架能够以纯粹建构主义叙事的方式描述从生命起源到高级认知的全过程。在论文结尾，我们提出了若干拓展思路的途径，包括对本理论进行实验验证（体外与计算机模拟）。