Crystalline order and living order should not be placed parallel to each other, because they are phenomena not at all related to each other. The relationship, in the sense of simularity, or of having the same origin, is already at much deeper [structural] levels neutralized by qualitative gaps. The crystal is not self-purpose, but a causally conditionally "to-be-such" product, which voluntarily and with preference forms wherever the conditions of its generation are satisfied. The crystal is the necessary end-point of inorganic matter formation, [this matter formation] consisting of molecular individuals ["true" molecules, and crystals (each one of which is a [large] molecule itself)], which form under the associating, aggregating, and orientating, influence of "residual forces", now appearing in the form of inter-molecular forces (this condition being the opposite of the chaotic condition in gases).
Crystals, basically, do not have size limits, they can be viewed as spatially unbounded. Their size is the product of contingency, although certain sizes are hard to surpass. Also this is contrary to how things are in organismic mega-molecules, having a regular functional limiting size, downwards and upwards.
While in crystals there are only a few form-types, the fact that with increasing molecular size the molecular form and shape play an increasingly great role, is verified in organisms in an almost unbelievable form, which, it is true, is a functional form "synthesized" through performance and selection.
The living and non-living condition, as seen in the Unimol view of organisms.
To this note, I [JB] would like to add the following :
We speak about "living matter" (versus non-living matter), or, equivalently, "living substance". What precisely is "living" [somewhere] in this matter? According to Unimol, the aquous support medium, and all the (small) molecules and ions in it, is not living. Only the mega-molecule, supported by the medium, is truly living. It is the "living matter", and it is surrounded by a non-living denaturation layer separating it from the medium or directly from the outer environment.
What, then, exactly means "living", the living state, and thus the living state of the mega-molecule? Well, we may say that the mega-molecule is living because it actively behaves s u c h that it will exist and persist as a result. The mega-molecule has, or is, a "strategy" for it to exist and persist. And because the aquous medium is part of this strategy, it too must persist, meaning that the organism-as-a-whole (mega-molecule + support medium) is a strategy to exist and persist. And the strategy is active and specific. It is ordered to the relevant organismic species. We can also say that the living mega-molecule is itsef a strategy (expressed in its structure and activity), but that it must use its specific aquous support medium as a necessary extension of its strategy. And it is the strategy of the mega-molecule that is its organismic existential function", its "self-one-function", rendering the mega-molecule to be a living molecule.
If we, now, mechanically isolate [i.e. cut out] a piece from this living matter, from this organism, or better, from the mega-molecule, we still cannot observe it as living matter because, as a result of the intervention to isolate that piece, a denaturation layer will form. So when we have isolated such a piece, say a piece of tissue, and when this tissue, if embedded in a proper (artificial) physiological medium and held at proper temperatures, still manages to perform cell division, and thus still manages to grow, one speaks of (still) "living" tissue. However, it would be better not to call it living, but to call it (still) chemically active. So an isolated piece of "living matter" is itself not living matter. Indeed, the preserved chemical activity as such, i.e. of the isolated piece of living matter (tissue), is not ordered to the preservation of the organism from which it was taken, neither is it ordered to the preservation of itself, it is just chemically active, as it was in the organism. So this isolated piece of living matter is not itself living. And, of course, the same holds for an isolated piece being isolated merely by thought, i.e. a region of the organism (the mega-molecule) to which attention is focessed : Also this region (and all other such regions) is not living. Only the whole mega-molecule is actually living, as long as it still actively behaves s u c h as to prolong its existence, behavior, that is, that guarantees the molecule's existence and persistence. And in doing so it uses its support medium which is part of its strategy, and which mediates between the outer environment (parts of which are exploited by the strategy) and the mega-molecule).
But isn't then, along these same lines, a crystal also a living entity? We could say, it seems, that the crystal adops precisely t h a t structure in which it is thermodynamically stable. Seen in this way, the crystal's structure is its "strategy" to exist and persist under certain conditions of concentration and temperature. We said, "its strategy". To what, then, does "its" refer? Well, evidently not to the crystal or its structure, because that is the result of the "strategy". It is the structure assumed by . . . , well by what?. Well, "its" (in the expression "its strategy") must evidently refer to the "system of particles", whether being a solution, a melt, a crystal, or a gas. This system, brought in certain external circumstances, assumes precisely t h a t configuration of its constituents (namely (1) the state of dispersion, i.e. degree of fine-grainedness of the particles in the medium (solvent), (2) the state of aggregation, i.e. the degree of possible shifting past one another of the particles in the medium, and (3) the geometric pattern of the set of particles), a configuration that results in thermodynamic equilibrium (i.e. when the system has lowest free energy). So it seems that it is the "system of particles" to which "its" in the expression "its strategy" refers. But a system of particles, as we have it in a melt or solution which is about to crystallize, is not really an "it". It doesn't keep its identity upon crystallizing from a solution because not all particles of the solute are going to make up the crystal. It does more so upon crystallizing from a pure melt, but there (as also often in a crystallizing solute) several, or even many, crystals are generated at the same time, and these do not together form an "it". And, taken as a "system", it has no i n t r i n s i c boundaries separating it from its environment. Ontologically a collection of crystals of the same species is different from a single individual crystal (which truly is an "it", a being, an "ens"). So in crystallization there is no true "it" having a strategy to exist and persist.
More or less the same goes for ordinary non-living non-crystalline (micro) molecules : Their shapes and structural details are just the results of internal quantum mechanical stability. Of a molecule (or atom for that matter) we cannot say that "it" assumes this structure, because the "it" here is the molecule with this necessary structure already.
So we see that in the "inorganic domain" there are no entities possessing a strategy for them to exist and persist, and thus there [in the inorganic domain] are no entities that are actually l i v i n g.
How, then, are things in the organismic domain? Here we see an external, but especially an internal activity ordered to maintain the organism. The metabolism in the organism is constantly going on without changing the organism as a whole (it is even ordered to not changing it). And where it does change, as in growing older or, even more so, in metamorphosis, it belongs to the strategy of the organismic species, a strategy embodied in the internal and external activity of every individual of the species. Growing older is, it is true, a process of degeneration, but is neutralized by the organism's ability to reproduce, which ability is also part of the strategy of the organism's form to exist and persist. While inorganic things exist by having lowest free energy and thus by "to be in thermodynamic equilibrium", organisms are far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium structures. When they would achieve thermodynamic equilibrium, they would have been disintegrated as a result (or, better, disintegration leads them to thermodynamic equilibrium, so without special measures they will spontaneously fall apart). So in order to stay away from thermodynamic equilibrium and to keep up maintaining themselves, organisms actively export entropy by dissipation of heat into the environment (and export unusable transformed matter too) and import usable energy (and matter) from the environment. They are dissipative structures. They maintain, each one of them, internal order but nevertheless by doing so do increase the total entropy of the Universe, and so obeying the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
And although it cannot purely physically be expressed, in organisms there is, in contrast to inorganisms such as crystals, s o m e t h i n g that wants to survive, something that wants to persist. And that something is, and utilizes, a s t r a t e g y to be able to do so. So here indeed there truly is an "it" whereto the "its" in the expression "its strategy" refers. It is the very self that wants to persist. And precisely because of this, of having or being a "self", we have to do with the truly living.
In the present context it is perhaps instructive to add a (translation of a) paragraph or two from the Section "One*molecule-system and System-only" also in Müller's book on Unimol, a Section, that we will later treat in its entirety :
Now one cannot apply the physical concepts of homogeneity -- a homogeneous body is of the same nature at all its points (regions) -- and phase -- a phase is a region within which the substance is homogeneous. Homogeneous bodies are one-phase bodies -- to the exterior (metaphorically speaking) of the living system, but should let these concepts (homogeneity, phase) refer to the (state of the) intrinsic essence, to the "interior", that is, to the uniform function of the living system (this function being the organismic existential function). The uniform essence all by itself already means a "homogeneity", and the holistic nature of the organism can be taken as pseudo-homogeneity, and moreover -- although not entirely corresponding to conventional usage in chemistry and physics -- it [the organism] to call a one-phase body is then also "legitimate". So the living substance may, from this point of view, thus be treated as formally a one-phase system, but we should not forget that here the experimentally accessible reality somewhat deviates. Physically conditionally one should take into account the not strict one-phase colloid-chemical system reality.
If one approaches things from this side and interprets the "true" living system as to be a protein-organosol, then one, in the strict physically-chemical sense, has to do with a heterogeneous poly-phase system (disperse phase in "medium of dispersion"). A strong appositional and imbibitional [resp. depositional and inclusional] hydratation [i.e. the to-be-dispersed particles changing the structure of adjacent water of the aquous medium of dispersion, and so creating a water-mantle (an aquous coating) around them] does not, it is true, do away with this discontinuity [in the sense of heterogeneity], but erases the phase boundaries, and we may assume that in the living system the superficially physically-chemical phase boundaries have become so blurred, that one has to do, not, it is true, with a real homogeneous system, but practically nevertheless with a one-phase system with some sort of variations as its inhomogeneities.
And from note 268 (Müller) :
The colloid-chemical state [larger particles in permanent suspension in a medium] may, despite its usefulness, be neglected when it is about living matter itself.
There are [however] interesting discussions about complex-coacervation [formation of complex semi-solid colloidal suspensions, gels]. In adding together poly-acids and poly-amines, one, under certain conditions, obtains not simply a salty precipitation, but a complex multi-component system. Such systems are not homogeneously isotropic [i.e. they are not without differences in nature in different spatial directions within the system] and have unsharp phase boundaries (phase blurring), that is, no phase boundaries satisfying the physical definition. Perhaps expressing such a system as a zonal or range-oriented anisotropic [different properties in different spatial directions] one-phase system would be appropriate.
How does one imagine the longe-range stability of a pure system [in contrast to an uni-molecular system], that were, seen from a colloid-chemical viewpoint, a partially de-mixing system, and that, on the one hand, has an unexpected sensitivity to physically and chemically hardly detectable influences, but, on the other hand, at the same time being a hardly surveyable [system], and also a, by even rather gross physical and chemical influences not to be de-arranged system with a frozen equilibrium and consisting of super-cooled solutions.?
Of course one may erect a system of explanations (for every type of state on its own, one can prepare experimental conditions, for instance emulgators and protecting colloids or stabilizing [electrical] conditions, etc.). Unimol doesn't have these difficulties, and lets remain only the following problems : To more precisely express a series of marginal phenomena and particulars.
A colloid-chemical theory of development [of the living state] is possible, but it especially would be a mere description ordered to the colloid-chemical phenomena, which [description] perhaps is more or less continuous [in the sense of complete], but which description would lack any explanatory value. Colloid chemical states hardly can appear as causes, but always only as effects. That what they constitute precisely is the colloid-chemical effect. Colloid chemistry doesn't determine [i.e. find] any material property, but the substances assume, under certain conditions, special features, namely physically-chemical states, being "between" the normal and most common states, and as such form the subject of colloid chemistry. Because we can, in thought, replace any substance by any other substance, in which [other substance] the first is not molecularly soluble [and therefore suspends in it with larger particles], theoretically every substance can assume the "colloid state", as a generally possible state of matter.
And again from the main text of Müller's Section One&molecule-system and System-only we here insert the following :
The sudden[ly appearing] new qualities of organisms [when going from inorganisms to organisms] ( life-specific behavior, which once came into existence) are only comparable [as to their suddenness] with those of the simple [non-living] organic and the inorganic molecular forms, which, as do organismic living molecules, show, relative to their atomic constituents, true and enduring differences [i.e. show suddenly appearing new qualities]. So we mean : The distinction between the living and non-living states does, if one wants to compare anyway, not correspond to [i.e. not reside within] a colloid-chemical or similar system-only, whose effect is a mere additive one, formed -- and increased through certain interactions -- by effects of the [still] free components. But the distinction between the living and the non-living corresponds to [i.e. resides within] a chemically-molecular system, to a new substance [i.e. the description of the qualitative transition from the non-living to the living takes place within the overall description of chemical systems. So the transition is a chemical difference.]. In chemical systems it often happens that the possessed-by-their-own influences [workings, properties] of the free components -- [and then, in fact still not components at all] (properties of the unbonded atoms whose constitutive potencies always allow them to be combined into resulting new quality-types) -- almost completely and irretrievably disappear, and in their place we exclusively see the new properties of the compounds [Earlier, when, following HOENEN, 1947, treating the metaphysics of chemical compounds (See Part XVe and XVf ), we said that some of the properties of the atoms-going-to-make-up-the-molecule are lost or replaced by other properties, and these are now properties of the compound molecule, while the preserved properties of these atoms (residing in their central regions) also become properties, not of these atoms anymore, but of the molecule. In this way the atoms reside, not actually, but virtually in the compound molecule.]. New chemical relationships are new chemical compounds with new bondings. True, highly capable interaction is only to be found in atomic-molecular relationships, for instance in proteins. Interactions between closed self-contained [i.e. individual] molecules, free-swimming floats in a plasmatic-aqueous basic medium, as we have to assume them in systems-only, depend upon little-capable residual forces only.
And to emphasize again the SELF in organisms, the "it" in "its strategy", we may produce here yet another consideration of Müller's from the same Section :
Ontogenesis [i.e. individual development of an organism] (with its phenomena of regulation complexification, and directedness), regeneration [of body parts and tissues], and transplantation- implantation- and determination [what determines what] experiments, which represent the very difficult-to-interpret cases for the concrete system view [system-only view], are at the same time classically illustrative demonstrations in favor of the one-molecule view (Unimol). So also insect metamorphosis -- especially the processes during the pupal stage with partial destruction of the larval bodily constitution and orientation-anew and growth-anew up to the mature insect -- shows itself to be a true trans-formation [of itself], to be a development-of-and-by-itself, to be a forming itself, and to be a completing itself of a molecularly individual unity, and not [showing itself] to be a rearrangement of a given system or of a system-combination (being already in need for a super-ordination factor [in order to be a system] ) into another system.
All natural and experimental ontogenetic phenomena, which often are [as they are interpreted] not compatible with one another and especially not with current theories, must be understood such that a certain chemically-molecular mega-structure tries to establish itself. And that is at the same time the last fundament of the overall determination.
Spemann's principle of progressive organization is the consequent development of the one-molecule. A system-only is stationarily thinkable, and it also shows voluntary [i.e. spontaneous] re-arrangements, for example from a higher-energy unstable state to a low-energy levelled-out state, but a development of a system, or of something system-like, is not known. But if one then makes the usual assumption of the living state to be a unique state, then this necessarily demands the belief in some "vitalistic" directing agent.