The statement has been clarified.
Section 9. General overview. While the grand finale “Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of chemical predetermination” is impressive and summarizes the championing work of the author, chemical predetermination may apply to the very early stages of evolution and not to many of the stages described in the manuscript. How much chemical predetermination can there be with polymers as these explore a minute fraction of the space they make possible? In the enthalpic-entropic gradient that is proposed, there is also a gradient from “predetermination” to historical contingency. The boundaries of such a gradient is murky and the final statement may not apply to much of modern biochemistry, once proteins start to achieve stable complex structure and much earlier that the time of LUCA. In fact, the genome rearrangements that underlie Figure 1 are testament to the historical contingencies that were already at play in LUCA and not to chemical predetermination.