Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Books on the origin of life -- 1 Conceptual framework of research on the origin of life on Earth -- Introduction -- Determinism and contingency in the origin of life -- Only one start - or many? -- The anthropic principle, SETI, and the creationists -- Questions for the reader -- 2 Approaches to the definitions of life -- Introduction -- A historical framework -- The visit of the Green Man -- Main operational approaches to the origin of life -- I. The "prebiotic" RNA world -- II. The compartmentalistic approach -- III. The "prebiotic metabolism" approach -- The universal metabolism -- Metabolism on clay and mineral surfaces -- The beauty of pyrite -- Other metabolic approaches -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 3 Selection in prebiotic chemistry: why this . . . and not that? -- Introduction -- From Oparin to Miller - and beyond -- Other sources of organic molecules -- Miller's -amino acids: why do they form? -- Some notes on homochirality -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 4 The bottle neck: macromolecular sequences -- Introduction -- Proteins and nucleic acids are copolymers -- The quest for macromolecular sequences -- What about polynucleotides? -- A grain of sand in the Sahara -- The "never-born proteins" -- A model for the aetiology of macromolecular sequences - and a testable one -- Homochirality in chains -- Chain chirality and chain growth -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 5 Self-organization -- Introduction -- Self-organization of simpler molecular systems -- Self-organization and autocatalysis -- Polymerization -- Self-organization and kinetic control -- Self-organization and breaking of symmetry -- Complex biological systems -- Self-organization and finality.

Out-of-equilibrium self-organization -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 6 The notion of emergence -- Introduction -- A few simple examples -- Emergence and reductionism -- Deducibility and predictability -- Downward causation -- Emergence and non-linearity -- Life as an emergent property -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 7 Self-replication and self-reproduction -- Introduction -- Self-replication and non-linearity -- Myths and realities of self-replication -- Self-replicating, enzyme-free chemical systems -- One more step towards complexity -- Self-reproducing micelles and vesicles -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 8 Autopoiesis: the logic of cellular life -- Introduction -- Historical background -- Basic autopoiesis -- Criteria of autopoiesis -- What autopoiesis does not include -- Chemical autopoiesis -- Autopoiesis and cognition -- Cognition and enaction -- Necessary and sufficient? -- One glance further up: from autopoiesis to the cognitive domain -- Social autopoiesis -- Autopoiesis and the chemoton: a comparison of the views of Ganti with those of Maturana and Varela -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 9 Compartments -- Introduction -- Surfactant aggregates -- Aqueous micelles -- Compartmentation in reverse micelles -- Cubic phases -- Size and structural properties of vesicles -- The water pool and the membrane of vesicles -- Prebiotic membranes -- The case of oleate vesicles -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 10 Reactivity and transformation of vesicles -- Introduction -- Simple reactions in liposomes -- Giant vesicles -- Self-reproduction of vesicles -- The matrix effect -- The importance of size for the competition of vesicles -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- 11 Approaches to the minimal cell -- Introduction.

The notion of the minimal cell -- The minimal RNA cell -- The minimal genome -- Further speculations on the minimal genome -- The road map to the minimal cell. 1: Complex biochemical reactions in vesicles -- The road map to the minimal cell. 2: Protein expression in vesicles -- The road map to the minimal cell. What comes next? -- Concluding remarks -- Questions for the reader -- Outlook -- References -- Index.