Your "archaic Darwinian tautology" gets adjusted here:
'Molecular diffusion was discovered qualitatively already in the nineteenth century by Robert Brown; much later, Einstein and Perrin quantified Brownian motion, cementing the view that all molecules are real, albeit very small objects (Newburgh et al 2006). As such, they are subject (only [italics]) to physicochemical laws, principally chemical thermodynamics and quantum chemistry. Therefore, definitions of life that impute (biological [it.]) characteristics, for example, Darwinian evolution, to chemical systems become tautological.
Neither bacterial cells in vivo, nor the molecules comprising them have any inherent capability for Darwinian evolution -- cells (cannot help but [it.]) exhibit Darwinian evolution because of molecular (and supra-molecular) errors in the transmission of genetic information. Similarly, no physicochemical properties of molecules indicate that molecules can (spontaneously [it.]) self-organize in "cycles" and self-replicate (Orgel 2000). They can do so only in reproducing cells or in designed cell-free systems, which eventually reach equilibrium.'
(Spitzer JJ, The Complexity of Life's Origins, in Handbook of Astrobiology Ch. 6.6)