Abstract
One of the central issues of the whole process of biogenesis is how to understand the progressive constitution of a large (in spatial and temporal terms) system that transcends the individual sphere of proto-metabolic organizations and includes collective networks, both synchronous (i.e., proto-ecosystem webs) and asynchronous (i.e., trans-generational protocell populations). This paper analyzes the appearance of a minimal form of reproduction in the process of biogenesis from an organizational perspective. This perspective highlights the problem of how a process transcending the actual organization of the reproducing entities (i.e., protocells) could have a causal power. It is proposed that this problem may be explained if we consider that reproduction generates a kind of feedback between the actual concatenation of the processes of each reproducing cycle and the type continuity that a reliable iteration of these cycles creates. Thus, reproduction generates a new form of self-maintaining system linking "organismal" and "evolutionary" domains, since the consequence of the iteration of self-reproducing cycles is the long-term continuity of a specific type of SM compartmentalized organization, and the functional role of a particular self-reproducing organization (token) lies in its capacity to trigger a diachronic succession of similar self-reproducing organizations, i.e., a lineage.