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Assembly Theory Provides A Measure of Specified Complexity That Quantifies but does Not Explain Selection and Evolution

BioCosmos: New perspectives on the origin and evolution of life
Volume 5 (2025): Issue 1 (January 2025)
By:
Open Access
|Oct 2025

Figures & Tables

Figure 1.

The assembly of English strings. On the left we assemble the word ‘short’ (ai = 4), on the right the word ‘hubbubbubboo’ (ai = 7). Shortest pathways are shown, as is the growing pool of building blocks. Note that at each step the resulting product is inserted back in the pool. This allows the reuse of ‘ubb’ to construct ‘hubbubbubboo’ in fewer steps.
The assembly of English strings. On the left we assemble the word ‘short’ (ai = 4), on the right the word ‘hubbubbubboo’ (ai = 7). Shortest pathways are shown, as is the growing pool of building blocks. Note that at each step the resulting product is inserted back in the pool. This allows the reuse of ‘ubb’ to construct ‘hubbubbubboo’ in fewer steps.

Figure 2.

Illustrative rejection regions for ai and ℓ. Though not referenced in Sharma et al. (1), early work by Marshall et al. (11) (their Figure 4 governed by CC BY 4.0; reproduced here with slight aesthetic modifications) illustrates biosignature interpretations for different observed combinations of ai and ℓ. The yellow area where ai is too close to log2 ℓ is rejected as being too simple – objects in this region can be explained by appeals to random chance and so a directed/biotic selection process cannot be securely inferred. On the other hand, objects in the red region where ai is too close to ℓ are rejected for being ‘so complex that even living systems might have been unlikely to create them’ Marshall et al. (11); we discuss this in Section ‘Conclusion’. The green Goldilocks zone sits in-between and marks where a directed process can be inferred. Note that while the outer envelope is rigorously defined, these internal subregions are not; they are provided for illustrative purposes only.
Illustrative rejection regions for ai and ℓ. Though not referenced in Sharma et al. (1), early work by Marshall et al. (11) (their Figure 4 governed by CC BY 4.0; reproduced here with slight aesthetic modifications) illustrates biosignature interpretations for different observed combinations of ai and ℓ. The yellow area where ai is too close to log2 ℓ is rejected as being too simple – objects in this region can be explained by appeals to random chance and so a directed/biotic selection process cannot be securely inferred. On the other hand, objects in the red region where ai is too close to ℓ are rejected for being ‘so complex that even living systems might have been unlikely to create them’ Marshall et al. (11); we discuss this in Section ‘Conclusion’. The green Goldilocks zone sits in-between and marks where a directed process can be inferred. Note that while the outer envelope is rigorously defined, these internal subregions are not; they are provided for illustrative purposes only.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/biocosmos-2025-0013 | Journal eISSN: 2719-8634
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Language: English
Page range: 82 - 95
Published on: Oct 26, 2025
Published by: The Israel Biocomplexity Center
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year
Keywords:
specified complexity,
assembly theory,
origin of life
Related subjects:
Chemistry,
Biochemistry,
Life sciences,
Evolutionary biology,
Philosophy,
History of philosophy,
History of philosophy, other,
Physics,
Astronomy and astrophysics

© 2025 Onsi Joe Fakhouri, published by The Israel Biocomplexity Center
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

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