The basic idea of Kauffman's book is that the complexity we see in nature (including life or technology) is contingent to math, i.e. can be explained and predicted by mathematical reasoning. The same is true of statistical thermodynamics and evolution. He states that Darwin's evolutionary theory explains only how complex life emerged from simple life, but it does not explain how simple life emerged from matter. There is probably a larger jump in complexity from matter to the first simple cell, than from that simple cell to a modern human being. Darwin does not explain that first jump. Kauffman doesn't either even though he is convincing in showing that life must have started through autocatalytic sets of molecules. He points out that these sets are self-organizing, stable and can vary as a reflex to external stimuli. What he mentions, but does not explain, is that autocatalytic sets can (or must) self-reproduce, a necessary step before evolution sets in. On page 66 of the paperback edition he states that "such breaking in two happens spontaneously as such [auto-catalytic] sets increase in volume", but, maddeningly, he does not explain how or why. One has to wonder: if life is such a necessary result of matter (therefore the title "at home in the universe") why then has it proven so difficult to synthesize anything approaching life in the laboratory? He doesn't say.

some blog wrote:
John Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, and his colleagues claim to have figured out how ribose, phosphate and the nitrogenous (nitrogen-bearing) molecules known as nucleobases first came together to form nucleotides—the building blocks of the RNA world from which life is thought to have emerged."My assumption is that we are here on this planet as a fundamental consequence of organic chemistry," Sutherland told The New York Times. His secret was running the experiment in stages, only adding phosphate in the final step. So far, the team has succeeded in building two of the four nucleotides; the molecule pictured [left] is cytosine, the nucleobase that, until now, scientists were unable to combine with sugars and phosphates to form the RNA nucleotide ribocytidine phosphate.

Is the latest discovery a real breakthrough or just another high-profile paper to tease the navel-gazers of the science world? Jack Szostak of the Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in a commentary that the new discovery "will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry."