Life may not be the only process that works counter-entropy. There are two lines of thinking emerging that the principles we see so clearly in life may be more

Life may not be the only process that works counter-entropy. There are two lines of thinking emerging that the principles we see so clearly in life may be more general and appear in abiotic processes as well... that physical systems "evolve" to transform available energy gradients into a localized increase in complexity. So evolution in a general sense is more fundamental than life, and inevitably eventually leads toward processes complex enough to be called "life". One comes from the work of Jeremy England[1], who has published some excellent papers showing what he calls 'dissipation-driven adaptation', natural selection working on phsyical and pre-biological systems. Englands work is really eye-opening and I have feeling if he keeps it up he may be a likely candidate for a Nobel in physics or biology some day. The other line comes from Adrian Bejan's formulation of what he calls the "constructal law"[2]. This describes some specific patterns according to which physical systems evolve to dissipate energy more efficiently. It seems to me that Bejan is a bit under-appreciated in academia, although apparently people have found quite a few practical applications of his ideas. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_England [2] https://constructallaw.com/ https://constructallaw.com/