Stuart Kauffman: molecular autonomous agent (and maybe life) is "a system that is able to reproduce itself, and is also able to do at least one good old fashioned thermodynamical work cycle, or the chemical generalization of a work cycle." (from a sweet webcast)
Cells are "collectively autocatalytic" (from same webcast.)
Kauffman says it is a fundamental truth that things are getting more chemically diverse. But someone I was reading today was saying there was no evidence of any evolutionary trends. I think it was in the Turney "A Simple Model of Unbounded Evolutionary Versatility..." (available in my digital library) that this was in.
Kauffman: "You can't have an agent at equilibrium: nothing happens."
Kauffman: "To do work the universe has to get itself divided into two parts. Where did that come from?"
Is organization then just variegation? Variegation I guess means some set of things is varied on some axis. But then it comes down to a question of what the axis is, and who defines it.