Replication

Replication is the process by which a system produces copies of itself — whether molecules, cells, organisms, ideas, or computational processes. It is the engine of heredity, evolution, and memetics: without replication, there is no selection; without selection, there is no adaptation.

In biology, replication refers to DNA replication and cellular reproduction. In computation, it describes self-copying programs and the propagation of information across networks. In the context of abiogenesis and dissipative structures, replication marks the threshold where a self-maintaining chemical network becomes capable of producing functional copies — the transition from metabolism to life.

The formal study of replication connects to autocatalysis (self-catalyzing chemical cycles), hypercycles (networks of mutually catalytic replicators), and error threshold theory — the mathematical limit on how much copying error a replicator can tolerate before information degrades faster than selection can preserve it.