On the Non-Equivalence of Molecular Synthesis and Life Formation

This paper proposes a formal distinction between molecular synthesis and life formation, motivated by persistent difficulties in abiogenesis research. Standard approaches often treat the successful construction of biomolecules under controlled laboratory conditions as evidence of their relevance for natural emergence. The paper argues that this assumption is structurally flawed. Within the proposed framework, life is defined not in terms of specific molecular configurations, but as a self-sustaining transformation regime characterized by reproduction and transmission of structural organization. A formal criterion for reproduction is introduced as invariance (up to structural equivalence) under environment-dependent transformation dynamics. The argument is developed within the Filtered Configuration Framework (FCF), which treats observable structures as the outcome of successive filtering processes acting on a broader configuration space. This perspective implies that constructibility, stability, and observability are distinct constraints and should not be conflated. The paper further shows that many self-organizing systems fail the reproduction criterion and therefore do not qualify as life-like regimes, and suggests that abiogenesis should be reframed as a problem of identifying transformation regimes rather than synthesizing target molecules.