@Leadfoot,
No, really, you should keep up. Youre trying to conflate what Arnold did as design engineering going forward. NO, she DISCOVERED how nture works and its really interesting that her work parallels Bob Hazens own "reaction connectivity" ( also ala J Maynard Smith) for the evolution of complexity in minerals since the foundation of this planet. Her work was one of discovery, not design. (THAT becomes a new discovery of how nature does it).
We discussed this before and what Arnold didnt realize , was that "IN THE BEGINNING, the amunt of proteins, enxymes and other catalysts, WERE LIMITED in number. The actual skull numbing numbers grew with time. Thats the complexity issue.
Remember, Darwin himself had his own work of DISCOVERY grow out of an experimental project of ARTIFICIAL SELECTION of pigeons, plants, and barnacles and where mutability and heritability is affected.
You seem to be like gungsnale, who is buy trying to shoehorn things into your worldview..
Stop trying to be a huckster,
We discussed Arnolds researchmethods. It was a whole lot pf hunt and peck and dumping huge piles of data until a desirable outcome was realized. Then the protein catalysts refine the next paths by removing what doesnt work.
Id said many times, there are only a few methods of peptide catalyses and these methods will LIMIT the reactions that can occur. Its not "design" as you are wanting, its more a search for the needle in a haystack.Nature doesnt select the best fit, instead it "settles " for what works at the time.
I think you can see how her studies with available grad students told us that.
I hope you d especially been paying attention without too much conclusion.
Im thinking of introducing Hazens work to her,because theres much in common, growth and diversification of mineral species seems to be a conjugate with Smiths conjoined network among all increasing numbers of species (minerals, enzymes, etc).
I dont think that we are really far apart in that while I accept (actually I started) the concept of limited methodologies of organic chemical reactions by several root processes to which life arose and developed as a reaction to changing environmenta, You said to me that "you think the chemical reactions were "front loaded". I cut you off (mostly cause you icalled it design aand said its algorithms, on these chemicals. that do designing).
I said that it was fixed chem responses, to which I now add that its responses but to a growing complexity of organic chemicals. We started with a few fatty acids and esters, along with a few amino acids . Just like all life, the building blocks also grew in number and complexity. (we sorta know this from the "Fossil chemicals" that we see in C12 rich sediments of the Archean periods.