Figure 1.

The three major transitions through constraint closure during the origins of life on Earth. (1) The advent of a reflexively autocatalytic and food-generated (RAF) set that arises from a diverse population of organic molecules upon autocatalytic closure. (2) The advent of polymeric information, also an RAF set, from a subset of existing RAF sets. These mutualistic [11] polymers reproduce and explore niche space via recombination of large blocks of information. (3) The discovery of polymer replication (unit-by-unit) reproduction and the resultant “selfish” genotypes and their inter-self competition [11].