The Singularity at the Heart of Evolutionary Biology: Organismal Selection and the Thermodynamic Origin of Life

The origin of the first organism presents as a fundamental discontinuity in evolutionary biology. While population‑centred theories of natural selection succeed when reproduction and heredity exist, they cannot explain life’s emergence from non‑living matter. Building on the conceptual framework of Organismal Selection, this work proposes a physical model in which the transition from lifeless ensemble to living system is described as a singularity in probability space, a critical point where dissipation becomes self‑referential. We demonstrate how persistent bias toward survival, quantified by the informational term β, arises when the energy flux Φ exceeds a critical value Φ*, resulting in self-referential persistence. This bias redirects entropic flow, transforming diffusive decay into a self-organising attractor in state space. This thermodynamic reinterpretation unifies dissipative-structure theory and evolutionary biology, positing organismal persistence rather than reproduction as the primitive selection criterion. The model further predicts measurable thresholds in energy flux and information sensitivity, offering a testable horizon for origin-of-life research.