The question of emergence and optimization of living-like system is a
long-standing conundrum. We will discuss emergence of Brownian motors,
namely, how ability to extract energy and convert it to motion may become a
preferential state of the system out of thermal equilibrium? An answer to
this question may advance an analogy between Brownian motors and living
systems by providing an explanation for emergence and evolution of highly
fluctuating nanomachines. The emergence of motion is shown to be a general
phenomenon. A motor converges to the state with the minimum of effective
temperature and with the corresponding minimum in the rate of conformation
changes similarly as some stochastic processes converge to the states with
minimum diffusion activity. This mechanism is similar to bacterial foraging
(chemotaxis). The implications include a hypothesis for the emergence of
the first biological machines during the pre-Darwinian chemical evolution,
deviation of stable natural or artificial machines from the minimum entropy
production principle, a method for the mass production of artificial
nanomachines and a framework for analysis of how energy and conformation
fluctuations drive small systems away from macroscopic physical laws.