I appreciate how we are going from different perspectives to the same line

The pleasure is mine ;) I would attribute it to the fact that when people have no vested interest in defending a worldview, but are concerned with truth alone, they (at least theoretically) should arrive at the same description of reality. The same holds true for our ancestors who expressed these ideas in the languages of their particular cultures and eras. Notwithstanding the experiences, the underlying reality was/is/will be the same for everyone, after all.

One of the ideas I have to consider is to add the idea of sparsity … etc.

I’m not completely sure where you are going with this, but after reading those quotes and “What Is Life?” (btw. thanks for that link, it’s a fantastic book!) I found several things that got me thinking:

Even if Schrodinger writes that “if you allow the reaction, the burning of the coal, to take place, a great amount of heat is produced. […] Yet we could not feed on the carbon dioxide that results from the reaction. And so […] Energy is needed,” chemical equation of photosynthesis (discovered in 1931) further proves his argument. I can only conclude that he was not aware of it. When I consider that even parenteral nutrition are basically metabolites, it only adds to the validity of his idea.

I also find it quite funny that he was so concerned about distinction between “periodic crystals” and “living matter” as to introduce the term “aperiodic crystal”. I can only wonder what he could come up with if fractals or the structure of DNA (and its periodicity) were known at the time he wrote his book.

All in all, it reminds me of Ouroboros (but more like many small snakes that eat each other’s tails and are ordered in a very specific manner). Or like one kid used to say while in elementary school, “The grass is at the top of the food chain.”