by reduction to dead chemistry, it 's not helpful to understand the why the living thing is alive. There is nothing special about chemical reaction in living system. What chemistry will tell us, the chemistry already told us. He mentioned "emergence", but it seems he don't know the term "emergence phenomenon" that solid physicst like to use. To me, "being alive " is an "emergent phenomenon", a lot of process orchestrating to make things alive. "replicative chemistry", what will it study? how will it study? come on, simple chemistry is not going to tell us. To me, living things is a dynamical
system with incomprehessible complexity, going reduction
won't help.