From Assembly to Autonomy: A Structure–Information–Cohesion–Transformation Research Programme for the Transition from Chemical Complexity to Self-Maintenance

Assembly theory (AT) quantifies how much historically contingent construction is needed to produce an object. This working paper asks a complementary question: under what organizational conditions does a chemically complex system become capable of active self-maintenance, heritable information processing and adaptive change? It adapts the S·I·C·T diagnostic heuristic (Structure, Information, Cohesion, Transformation) and its provisional viability relation S + C ≥ I + T to prebiotic chemistry. Version 1.1 is a validated revision of the v1.0 discussion draft. Every reference was checked against its source, the critiques of AT are balanced by the authors' published replies, and closely related prior frameworks are added (Gánti's chemoton, autopoiesis, RAF sets, closure of constraints). Two new computations are reported. (i) A sensitivity analysis shows the illustrative viability verdict reverses when the weight on a single variable departs from unity by roughly 20%, making commensurability the framework's binding constraint. (ii) A toy chemostat model shows the draft's single-perturbation cohesion proxy ranks a redundantly closed autocatalytic network lowest of three wiring classes, although its organized state depends most on its catalytic relations. Cohesion is therefore split into dependence and fragility, and a pre-registered simulation protocol with four falsification criteria (F1–F4) is specified. The contribution is a research programme, not a validated theory. The deposit includes the paper (PDF) and the LaTeX, figure and simulation source.