Submitters may find helpful the following background readings from varied perspectives, presented in chronological order:

Schroedinger, E. What is Life? (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1955)

Donald M. MacKay. Information, Mechanism and Meaning (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1969)

Jacques Monod. Chance and Necessity (New York: Knopf, 1971)

Leslie E. Orgel. The Origins of Life: Molecules and Natural Selection (New York, John Wiley, 1973)

Stanley L. Miller and Leslie E. Orgel. The Origins of Life on Earth (Eaglewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974)

R. W. Hamming. Coding and Information Theory (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice- Hall, l980)

M. Kimura. The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen. The Mystery of Life’s Origin (Dallas: Lewis and Stanley, 1984)

A. G. Cairns-Smith. Seven Clues to the Origin of Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Freeman Dyson. The Origins of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) Now second edition, (1999).

Robert Shapiro. Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (New York: Summit Books, 1986)

John Maynard-Smith. The Problems of Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)

Bernd-Olaf Küppers. Information and the Origin of Life (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990)

Cyril Ponnamperuma and F. R. Eirich, Editors Prebiological Self-Organization of Matter (A. Deepak Publishing: Hampton, VA, 1990)

Christian De Duve, Blueprint for a Cell:The Nature and Origin of Life (Burlington, NC: Patterson, 1991)

Hubert P. Yockey. Information Theory and Molecular Biology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

H. J. Morowitz. Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992)

Cyril Ponnamperuma and Julian Chela-Flores. Chemical Evolution: Origin of Life Proceedings of The Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, 26-30 October, 1992 (Hampton, VA: A Deepak Publishing, 1993)

Walter James ReMine. The Biotic Message (Saint Paul, MN: St. Paul Science, 1993)

Stuart A. Kauffman. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

David W. Deamer and Gail R. Fleischaker. Origins of Life: The Central Concepts (Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1994).

Periannan Senapathy. Independent Birth of Organisms (Madison: Genome Press, 1994).

Julian Chela-Flores, Mohindra Chadha, Alicia Negron-Mendoza, Tairo Oshima, Editors. Chemical Evolution: Self-organization of the Macromolecules of Life Proceedings of The Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, 25-29 October 1993 (Hampton, VA: A. Deepak Publishing, 1995)

John H. Holland. Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1995)

Christopher G. Langton. Artificial Life: An Overview (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995)

Stuart Kauffman. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Christian De Duve, Vital Dust–-Life as a Cosmic Imperative (New York: Basic Books, 1995)

Syozo Osawa, Evolution of the Genetic Code (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Lynn Margulis and D. Sagan. ‘What is Life’ (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1995)

Rizzoti (ed.): ‘Defining Life’ (Padua, Italy: University Padua Press, 1996)

Geoffrey Zubay. Origins of Life on the Earth and in the Cosmos (New York: WCB/McGraw Hill, 1996)

Michael J. Behe. Darwin‘s Black Box, (New York: The Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1996).

Julian Chela-Flores and Francois Raulin. Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origins and Evolution of Life, Proceedings of the 4th Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution, Trieste, Italy, 4-8 September 1995 (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996)

Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch. Steps Toward Life: A Perspective on Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Dean Overman. The Case Against Accident and Self-Organization, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997)

Christoph Adami. Artificial Life (New York: Springer-Telos, 1998)

William A. Dembski. The Design Inference, in Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Noam Lahav. Biogenesis: Theories of Life’s Origin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

André Brack. The Molecular Origins of Life: Assembling the Pieces of the Puzzle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Michael Gross. Life on the Edge (New York: Plenum Press, 1998)

John Maynard Smith. Shaping Life: Genes, Embryos, and Evolution (UK, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998; U.S., Yale University Press, 1999)

James P. Ferris, Editor. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Papers presented at the 1996 ISSOL Meeting in Orleans, France. Volume 28, Nos.4-6 October 1998 (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998)

Martin J. Medhurst and John Angus Campbell, Editors Rhetoric & Public Affairs (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, Vol 1, No 4, Winter 1998 Entire issue)

Fred Hoyle. Mathematics of Evolution (Memphis, Tenn: Acorn Enterprises, 1999)

John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary. The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origins of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Gesteland, R. F., Cech, T. R. & J F. Atkins, eds. The RNA World (Plainview, 2ND Edition, (NY: Cold Spring Harbor Lab. Press, 1999)

Werner R. Loewenstein. The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundations of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Hans Kuhn and Horst-Dieter Forsterling. Principles of Physical Chemistry (England: Wiley Press, 1999) pp 880-921; see also p 953

Gyula Palyi, Claudia Zucchi, Luciano Caglioti (Eds.) Advances in BioChirality (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999)

Freeman Dyson. The Origins of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Second Edition, (1999)

David J. Buller (Ed.). Function, Selection and Design (State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y., 1999

David Berlinski. The Advent of the Algorithm: the Idea That Rules the World (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2000)

Iris Fry. The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview (N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000)

L Kay. Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford: Stanford Univeristy Press, 2000)

Richard Sole and Brian Goodwin. Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology (New York: Basic Books Persius, 2000)

Stuart Kauffman. Investigations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada. The Spark of Life, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Persius, 2001)

Gyula Palyi, Claudia Zucchi, Luciano Caglioti (Eds.) Fundamentals of Life (Paris: Elsevier, 2002)

William A. Dembski, No Free Lunch, (New York, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)

Henry Harris, Things Come to Life: Spontaneous generation Revisited, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002)

J William Schopt, Ed, Life’s Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution (Ewing, N. J., Univer. of California Press, 2002)

Tom Fenchel, Origin and Early Evolution of Life (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003)

Marcello Barbieri, The Organic Codes: An Introduction to Semantic Biology (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Tibor Ganti, The Principles of Life (Oxford, UK, Oxford Unversity Press, 2003)

Nancy Forbes, Imitation of Life: How Biology is Inspiring Computing (MIT Press, 2004)

Clive Trotman, The Feathered Onion – Creation of life in the Universe (John Wiley and Sons, 2004)

Fazale Rana & Hugh Ross, Origins of Life (NavPress, Colorodo Springs, CO, 2004)

William Day, How Life Began, Marvin Solit, Foundation for New Directions,

Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Robert M. Hazen, Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin (Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C.2005)

Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart: The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005)

Samir Okasha: Evolution and the Levels of Selection (Clarendon Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006)

R Jastrow and M. Rampino: Origins of Life in the Universe (Cambridge Univ Press, New York, 2008)

Donald E. Johnson: Probability’s Nature and Nature’s Probability: A Call to Scientific Integrity (Booksurge Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2009)

Steven C. Meyer: Signature in the Cell (Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2009)

Deamer, D., Stoszak, J.W.: Origins of Life (Cold Spring Harbor Press, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y, 2010)

Johnson, Donald E.: Programming of Life (Big Mac Publishers, Sylacauga, Alabama, 2010)

Luisi, Pier Luigi; Stano, Pasquale (Eds.) The Minimal Cell: The Biophysics of Cell Compartment and the Origin of Cell Functionality (Springer 2010)

Abel, David L.(Ed) The First Gene: The Birth of Programming, Messaging and Formal Control (LongView Press Academic: Biol. Res. Div., New York, N.Y. 2011)