  The origin of cellular life can be described in terms of the transition from
inorganic matter: solids, liquids and gases, to the emergence of cooperative
assemblies of organic matter, DNA and proteins,capable of replication and
metabolism. Directionality Theory is a mathematical model of the collective
behavior of populations of organic matter: cells and higher organisms.
Evolutionary entropy, the cornerstone of the theory, is a statistical measure
of the cooperativity of the interacting components that comprise the
population. The main tenet of Directionality Theory is the Entropic Principle
of Collective Behavior: The collective behavior of aggregates of organic matter
is contingent on the population size and the external energy source, and
characterized by extremal states of evolutionary entropy. This article invokes
Directionality Theory to provide an evolutionary rationale for the following
sequence of transformations which define the emergence of cellular life: 1. The
self-assembly of activated macromolecules from inorganic matter 2. The
emergence of an RNA world, defined by RNA molecules with catalytic and
replicative properties 3. The origin of cellular life, the integration of the
three carbon-based polymers: DNA, proteins and lipids, to generate a metabolic
and replicative unit.
