Abhishek Sharma, Dániel Czégel, Michael Lachmann, Christopher P. Kempes, Sara I. Walker & Leroy Cronin — Assembly Theory Explains and Quantifies the Emergence of Selection and Evolution (2022)
arXiv:2206.02279
Assembly Theory (AT) proposes a new framework for measuring molecular complexity and detecting biosignatures of life. The assembly index of an object measures the minimum number of steps needed to construct it from its basic components — the higher the index, the more the object “remembers” its construction history and the more it embodies accumulated selection. Life, on this view, is distinguished not by any particular chemistry but by the degree to which it encodes and transmits assembly information across time.
The key insight is that information is physical: the complexity of a molecule is not just a mathematical property but a material trace of the selection processes that produced it. Assembly Theory thus connects information theory, thermodynamics, and evolutionary biology in a single framework.
For OM: Walker’s work grounds the claim that “information is physical” — that knowledge accumulated in communities (including underground communities) is not merely cultural but materially embedded. The assembly index provides a potential framework for thinking about how communities encode and transmit their protocols across time, and what “complexity” means in social systems.