From Physical Difference to Meaning: A Constructor-Theoretic Framework for Prebiotic Information in Casimir-Lifshitz-Coupled Protocell Clusters
This work addresses the origin of information and meaning in prebiotic chemistry, offering a physical grounding for concepts typically reserved for biology, but remains largely theoretical without experimental validation.
The paper proposes a constructor-theoretic framework for prebiotic information and meaning, using Casimir-Lifshitz-coupled protocell clusters as a minimal model. It shows that these clusters exhibit reproducible attractors and ordered transitions that can carry both informational and meaningful states, integrating physical mechanisms with proto-semantic functions.
This paper develops a physical framework for the prebiotic emergence of information and meaning. Building on Constructor Theory, we define information as a reproducible physical difference and meaning as a difference with stable functional consequences. Casimir-Lifshitz-coupled protocell clusters serve as a minimal model that exhibits reproducible attractors, ordered transitions, and autonomous task structures. We show that such clusters carry both informational states (e.g., distances, geometries, gradients) and meaningful states that regulate prebiotic tasks such as approach, exchange, or stabilization. This approach integrates physical mechanisms, computational mechanics, and early proto-semantic functions into a coherent account of information formation before biology.