The Animate State of Matter Hypothesis

This article looks at biology from a physical perspective. It argues that animate matter has a distinctive set of physical properties and must be regarded as a distinct aggregate state. The distinguishing feature of the animate state is the capacity of living bodies to generate orderly autonomous reconstructions at several length scales, including the atomic scale. The cause of these volitional reconstructions is a particular kind of collective chemical transformations. The orderly reconstructions perform several functions. They transport products and chemical precursors, induce new chemical reactions and cause new structural transformations. Therefore, the living bodies sustain themselves in the animate state. The orderly reconstructions manipulate matter at the molecular scale, where they control chemical transformations and synthesize specific products, which are unobtainable by means of chaotic reconstructions. At larger length scales, they build special structural arrangements that cannot be fabricated using random permutations. The molecular structure of animate matter differs from that of regular liquids. In liquids, molecules are not connected to each other. During chemical transformations, the disconnected molecules rearrange their atoms independently of each other. In the animate matter, on the other hand, the molecules are connected and are assembled into ordered arrangements. For this reason, the intramolecular transformations interact, adjust to one another, and combine into large collective reconstructions. This unique property makes life a distinct physical phenomenon. The paper identifies the source of volitional actions of living bodies, describes the blueprints of the simplest animate organisms, and conjectures how these organisms might have appeared from inanimate water solutions.