1 Introduction
SARA IMARI WALKER, PAUL C. W. DAVIES, AND GEORGE F. R. ELLIS

2 The “Hard Problem” of Life
SARA IMARI WALKER AND PAUL C. W. DAVIES

3 Beyond Initial Conditions and Laws of Motion: Constructor Theory of Information and Life
CHIARA MARLETTO

4 (How) Did Information Emerge?
ANNE-MARIE GRISOGONO

5 On the Emerging Codes for Chemical Evolution
JILLIAN E. SMITH-CARPENTER, SHA LI, JAY T. GOODWIN, ANIL K. MEHTA, AND DAVID G. LYNN

6 Digital and Analogue Information in Organisms
DENIS NOBLE

7 From Entropy to Information: Biased Typewriters and the Origin of Life
CHRISTOPH ADAMI AND THOMAS LABAR

8 Cryptographic Nature
DAVID KRAKAUER

9 Noise and Function
STEVEN WEINSTEIN AND THEODORE P. PAVLIC

10 The Many Faces of State Space Compression
DAVID WOLPERT, ERIC LIBBY, JOSHUA A. GROCHOW, AND SIMON DEDEO

11 Causality, Information, and Biological Computation: An Algorithmic Software Approach to Life, Disease, and the Immune System
HECTOR ZENIL, ANGELIKA SCHMIDT, AND JESPER TEGNÉR

12 Life’s Information Hierarchy
JESSICA FLACK

13 Living through Downward Causation: From Molecules to Ecosystems
KEITH D. FARNSWORTH, GEORGE F. R. ELLIS, AND LUC JAEGER

14 Automata and Animats: From Dynamics to Cause–Effect Structures
LARISSA ALBANTAKIS AND GIULIO TONONI

15 Biological Information, Causality, and Specificity: An Intimate Relationship
KAROLA STOTZ AND PAUL E. GRIFFITHS

16 Major Transitions in Political Order
SIMON DEDEO

17 Bits from Brains: Analyzing Distributed Computation in Neural Systems
MICHAEL WIBRAL, JOSEPH LIZIER, AND VIOLA PRIESEMANN

18 Machine Learning and the Questions It Raises
G. ANDREW D. BRIGGS AND DAWID POTGIETER