It is evident that in organismic life the fact of being "also a system" cannot be denied, and the multicomponent systems [inorganic chemical systems and computer simulations] are known and familiar as to the many of their surprising abilities [To such systems First Part of Website is devoted], which in the case of the living will show an unexpected sophistication and increase of performance.
In addition to all -- qua amount surely preponderant -- independent molecular forms of the orgamismic system, forms consisting of water, salts, active ingredients [such as enzymes, hormones, antibodies, etc.], etc., there exists within the system at the same time a bonding continuum which is about more or less that what one calls "living substance".
We, for the time being, leave open the question as to the precise nature of the bonding relationship, because we hardly know it in the case of even small protein molecules. The polypeptide bonding, corresponding to our way of writing it and corresponding to the usual chemical image (and proved for the small molecule of lower peptides), is, with respect to the intact bioproteins, surely a mere reduced scheme, a simplified stable gross structure, and at most a mesomeric boundary form of the functional order of bonding unknown to us [where "functional" means the behavior-describing reality.].
Although we do not pin down ourselves on the precise nature of the bonding, we do postulate that [in organisms] there is a true bonding relationship, and we compare it with the intra-molecular bonding [as it is seen] in lower proteins, because (1) living substance shows similar analytical composition [similar to that of the lower proteins], because (2) the intra-organismic unlimited bonding appears to us chemically consequent, and because (3) wholeness relation demands something like that, if it is about a rational picture at all. [And, indeed, we have, in part XVe and part XVf of the present Series, established that all molecules are true wholes.]
For the sake of a uniform consideration, it would just like that be possible to take the classically lower molecule (such as that of methane, sugar or urea) as a system, as a system of atoms being together. This specific being together , which is, precisely as it is in the living system, not a mere adjacent to one another, is in an exactly-following-natural-law way expressed by the chemical bonding relationship.
As to the small molecules of our classical chemistry we are totally used to this "bonding" among partners, although first of all it possesses merely a conceptual, and finally a functional, describing behavior, reality. All (physical) theories of bonding cannot mask the fact that we only (have to) assume them as a result of judging from behavior [i.e. from properties of reactivity], from the [phenomenon of] staying together (bonding), from certain functional wholeness behavior. A perfectly analogous [with that of small molecules] wholeness behavior is shown by the organismic wholes in which one can also speak of a conceptual and functional compound (bonding) among partners, a bonding that simply makes the (physical) interconnection between the partners, and which [interconnection] must be equal or similar qua essence to the bonding between the partners of the micro-molecule. This idea, while first of all seeming to be a mere analogy, turns out to be a good one with respect to its specifically protein-chemical presupposition, as well as to the many biological observations. One may also express oneself in a different way :
The organism, as it is described in biology, is a system. The organism as it is known to physiology, as it appears to be an essence [i.e. a true being] to philosophy, and as wholeness phenomena do present it, is a "system" with unmatched unclarifiable complexity. The organism, as it is, in ultimate conceptual reduction, characterized by the complexity of its system, is an immediate consequence and expression of precisely this complexity.
The complexity is a functional complexity. Its reduced physical equivalent is a direct relationship between the individual constituents [which physical equivalent makes the organism to be a mere aggregate of things, while its metaphysical conception makes it to be an aggregate not of things, not of parts or particles, but of qualities of one and the same thing.]. This relationship should not be taken to be fundamentally different from the direct relationship between the constituents of inorganically functional wholenesses (= stoichiometric molecules of our classical chemistry), relationships that are therefore "true" bondings.
The unimolecular view, not being an ad hoc or auxiliary hypothesis, but wishing to become an introductory theory, furnishes, when placed into some of Schrödinger's ("What is Life?") formulations, directly acceptable formulas. Also Feuerborn's expositions "On the concept of wholeness of living systems" (1938) may effectively be supplemented [by Unimol] in this way. Even in pertinent defenders of "the system", by which basically hardly is meant a pure "system-only", there is no formulation to be found that contradicts the -- correctly understood -- unimolecular view.
H.J. Jordan ("General comparative physiology of animals"), for instance, holds : Life is not the property of a homogeneous substance, but is the performance of a system .... And one may speak of causal explanations of (individual life-) phenomena, but not of a causal explanation of the organisms, of the organization, or of life .... Further, the task of biology (still according to Jordan) consists in viewing every living being as a system. Its enquiry can only be performed by simultaneously following two methods : A causal analysis of individual phenomena, followed by a synthesis enquiring into the interconnection of these phenomena .... A machine is never (still according to Jordan) a closed system, but always needs man to complete its system ....
From this, the first statement of Jordans's apparently contradicts unimolecularity quite sharply. It is, however, [as is expressed by "performance"] nothing else than our concept of the "organismic existential function" (with its basic meaning : Life, mind, etc., is the characteristic proper function of those material forms that precisely need this function in order to be able to be [i.e. to exist] ). The remaining statements, as well as those of many other authors, rationally match with our view. They only fail to explicitly express the [spatially continuous chemical] bonding.