rationalskepticism.org

I should probably give a better response than that. Sure biological evolution is different, although a fitness landscape does shape a solar system and a planet. But the point of saying that it is all part of the same kind of process is that wherever the right kind of complexity emerges, there is a sweet spot in an energy gradient where complexity begins to produce adaptive behavior. If simple life is the beginning of autopoeisis, it certainly isn't the end point. At the point where biological evolution begins, ever more complex self regulating entities emerge at higher levels. So cells become organisms, organisms become communities, societies, markets, biospheres, and so on. Each level is definable by the information it processes, as well as the information it externalizes. That process of signals and boundaries works at levels below as well. Drawing the line at autopoeisis is like drawing a line at a certain number of sand grains defining a heap. The analogy would be when a pile becomes unstable and begins to have avalanches. It kind of makes sense in that there could be reasons to draw such a line, but it also makes a different analysis seem "other" when the whole system may be better understood for some purposes as the elements which produce criticality or as the interactions from which it emerges.