The Principles of Life

Abstract

What is life? What are the essential differences between the living and non-living systems? The exact scientific answers to these ancient questions are indispensable preconditions for the understanding of the origins of life, for the artificial synthesis of living systems, but also for some important social problems, such as the beginning and the end of the human life. Based on the author's theory of fluid (chemical) automata, this book proves that all living systems are basically program-controlled, self-reproducing fluid automata, and that such automata behave as living systems. The simplest such construction — the chemoton — behaves as living, and all living systems have chemoton-type organization. This means that the chemoton model is the minimum model of life. The technical details have been published elsewhere: in this volume the logical train of thought is presented in a clear and easily understandable manner. The first part gives a general view of the idea; the second shows its application to the biogenesis; and the third gives the background of the theory in the natural philosophy of sciences. The author's chemical perspective captures the fundamentally cyclic organization of the living state, offers a fresh approach to the ancient problem of life criteria, and articulates a philosophy of the units of life applicable to genetics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, and exact theoretical biology. New notes throughout the text bring this legacy into dialogue with current thought in biology and philosophy.