Great thought-stirring reading, Walt. I was glad to learn about what for me were some new concepts, like aperiodic and self-assembly.

Not that I disagree per se with you or anyone else, my view is that life is just especially complicated chemistry. I'm not sure all the rest of the cosmos is significantly less complicated than life.

Bottom line, nature is endlessly proliferative. At Salt Point in California some years ago, I had a sort of epiphany watching waves break on the rocks. Zillions of molecules of water each followed a difference course as they tumbled, fell, dripped and pooled on the rocks. That is a complexity we take it for granted. We think it's "just gravity." Life might be "just some x."