Talk:Assembly theory

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:29, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

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• ... that assembly theory provides the first ever experimentally verifiable measure of molecular complexity as a signature of extraterrestrial life?
  • ALT1:... that assembly theory provides an experimentally verifiable way of detecting extraterrestrial life without needing to define what life is?

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Mandy Bujold

Created by Anachronist (talk). Self-nominated at 15:07, 3 July 2021 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Barely long enough. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:14, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing the length! Seeing how close it was (about 200 characters above the minimum), I also considered trying to trim and rephrase things until the DYK check reported exactly 1,500 characters while retaining the same information, but that started seeming like a time-suck. So I left it as is. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:40, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Some editors specialise in writing 1,500-character articles, regarding anything more as a waste of effort. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Abiogenesis

ought to consider implications of this for abiogenesis -- Waveguy (talk) 04:59, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Theory or Hypothesis?

The original article with a quotation of Cronin referring to his work as a hypothesis. The article offers no evidence that Cronin's hypothesis (as he himself characterizes) enjoys substantial support and scrutiny to characterize the work as a scientific theory. Evolution is a theory based on all of the characteristics one would expect from a hypothesis promoted to theory by repeated failure of attempts of falsification, confirmation of elements of the hypothesis, widespread endorsement, explication of consilience with established theory, etc. Demasio's work is called the somatic marker hypothesis, and is far more known and explored than this claim, and to accidentally promote this hypothesis to theory by equivocating between the lay sense of theory (guess, hypothesis) with the rigorous sense of theory (as in gravity, evolution, and Hebbian firing) is problematic. One doesn't "invent a theory" (original language), one proposes a hypothesis which eventually because so prominent and prevalent in the literature (and the hearts and minds of scientists) that it attains the property. Is there really a rejoinder to this complaint?

2023-06-09 jtvisona (talk)

While the word "Theory" is often used for an hypotheses that has been well established and accepted, "Theory" is also quite frequently used to refer to an organizing framework or collection of otherwise established observation. Wikipedia vital articles level-4/Mathematics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/4/Mathematics) lists, under Other, both "Number Theory" and "Category Theory" as established approaches to and areas of knowledge that were collected together under these titles. If there ever was a Number Hypothesis or Category Hypothesis, it's did not refer to the same collection of ideas. I know less of "String Theory", but the same may be true there.

A recent issue of Science, 22 Aug 2023, in a News article (doi: 10.1126/science.adk4451, ) talked of six theories of consciousness being identified for use in evaluating Large Language Model Systems, and identified "the Recurrent Processing Theory", " the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory," as well as "Higher Order Theories". The second already has a Wikipedia page.

That complex things can be built out of simpler pieces is well established, and that large concentration of identical or very similar complex things is uncommon in the absence of living systems is well established in statistics. Assembly theory is an attempt to identify and organize these facts as a way to look at what it would serve to identify the presence of "life". This also has implications for different way of looking at Time, as in American Scientist, Sept-Oct 2023

Rodion.rathbone (talk) 15:33, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Serious omission

A serious omission in the current version of this article: exactly when this hypothesis was proposed by chemist Leroy Cronin and developed by the team he leads at the University of Glasgow, and exactly when it was extended in collaboration with a team at Arizona State University led by astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker. Adding these dates (or months/years) will help to make this article more properly encyclopedic. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 17:50, 7 October 2023 (UTC)