Horizon, Metabolism, Ecology from Chemistry to Organisms to Evolution
After tracing the relational grammar of horizons, metabolisms, and ecologies across particles, atoms, molecules, stars, and galaxies, we now reach a pivotal question:
How does this pattern continue into life?
The usual scientific narrative treats life as a special category with unique defining features: self-replication, homeostasis, metabolism, evolution. But these are properties attributed to organisms as if they were discrete entities. A relational ontology approaches the problem differently:
Life is not defined by what an organism is, but by how certain relational patterns recurse on themselves.
Life continues the same triadic logic as the cosmos—only with a decisive intensification of reflexivity.
1. Chemistry as Proto-Metabolism: Horizons in Miniature
Before life emerges, we find chemical systems that already manifest the triad in rudimentary form:
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Horizon: local molecular constraints (e.g., membranes, scaffolds).
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Metabolism: persistent reaction cycles sustained by mutual conditioning.
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Ecology: energy and material flows linking the system to its surroundings.
Prebiotic chemistry already exhibits proto-horizons—micro-environments where reactions become locally stabilised:
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mineral surfaces
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clay lattices
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shallow pools
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ice matrices
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lipid assemblies
These structures are not alive, but they shape what reactions can stabilise, forming the first relational constraints that make life possible.
Chemistry does not “produce” life; it prepares metabolic substrates for relational deepening.
2. Metabolic Networks: Life as Persistence Through Exchange
The first step toward life is not replication but persistent metabolism—a network of reactions that stabilises through continual exchange.
A metabolic system is:
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a readiness-structure that maintains itself by consuming gradients,
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a localised horizon that constrains what enters and leaves,
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an ecological agent that interacts with its environment through energy flows.
The crucial relational shift:
Metabolism becomes internalised.
Instead of waiting for the environment to provide all structure, the system begins to produce its own conditions of persistence. This is life’s first leap: metabolism folds into itself, becoming self-supporting rather than externally scaffolded.
3. Membranes: Horizons That Stabilise Identity
At some point, a metabolic network begins to actualise its own horizon: a membrane.
A membrane is not fundamentally a barrier; it is a horizon that stabilises metabolic selectivity.
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It constrains inflow and outflow (ecology).
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It provides a surface for metabolic patterning (metabolism).
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It defines an interior-exterior distinction (horizon).
With the membrane, the system gains persistence of profile—it maintains a recognisable configuration over time despite constant flux.
This is the biological analogue of the atomic shell or the stellar gravitational well: a structured horizon that enables stable internal metabolism.
Life begins when this horizon-metabolism loop becomes self-sustaining.
4. Replication as Horizon Reproduction
Replication is often treated as the defining criterion of life. Here, replication arises naturally once a metabolic-horizon system becomes sufficiently stable.
In relational terms, replication is:
the propagation of a horizon configuration into a new metabolic-exchange system.
What replicates is not substance but a pattern of constraints that shape new flows of readiness. Genes, in this view, are templates of horizon-conditions, not blueprints for objects.
Replication does not mark the beginning of life; it is the consequence of a system that has already achieved:
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metabolic reflexivity,
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horizon stability,
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ecological coupling.
Life begins earlier, but replication accelerates its evolutionary potential by enabling iterative re-actualisation of relational patterns.
5. Biological Ecology: The First Genuine Relational Meta-System
Once living systems proliferate, they do not coexist as independent units. They enter into ecological coupling—a relational mesh where the metabolic readiness of one system becomes the ecological inclination of another.
This is the biological analogue of the galactic meta-ecology.
An ecology is not a place; it is a field of interdependent horizon-metabolism systems. In such a field:
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predators and prey shape one another’s readiness profiles,
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mutualists co-stabilise their horizons,
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competitors deepen one another’s metabolic intensities,
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niches emerge as collective constraints.
Ecology is where life’s relational recursion becomes inter-systemic. The relational triad that operated within individual organisms now scales outward across populations.
The cosmos scaled relational modes; life scales relational recursion.
6. Evolution: Horizon Metabolism Under Differential Ecological Pressure
Evolution is traditionally defined as differential reproduction across generations. In a relational ontology, evolution is more precisely:
the reconfiguration of horizon-metabolic systems under ecological tension.
Selection pressure is simply ecological inclination expressed as constraint. Mutation introduces micro-variations in horizon configuration. Reproduction proliferates these variations. Ecological interactions then stabilise some horizon-configurations and destabilise others.
Evolution is not a competition between individuals; it is a dynamical negotiation of relational readiness across a metabolic-ecological field.
What evolves is not the “organism” but the pattern of constraints that give the organism its relational stance.
7. Multicellularity: Horizons Within Horizons
Multicellularity is a recursive horizon formation:
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Cells as metabolic-horizon units
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Tissues as coordinated metabolic domains
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Organs as horizon-level specialisations
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Organisms as collective metabolic-horizon systems
Multicellularity is not aggregation; it is horizon nesting—a hierarchical arrangement in which:
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the organism provides the macro-horizon,
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tissues provide mid-level horizon constraints,
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cells remain micro-metabolic agents within them.
The organism becomes a meta-metabolism bounded by a singular horizon (the body) and regulated by ecological pathways (nervous signals, circulatory flows, hormonal gradients).
8. Mind and Meaning as Higher-Order Ecological Coordination
At sufficiently deep recursive horizons, metabolic systems begin to coordinate not only material flows but semiotic flows.
In brains:
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neurons act as metabolic units,
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synapses as ecological pathways,
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functional networks as emergent horizons.
Meaning, in this view, is not symbolic representation but relational construal—a horizon-level organisation of readiness patterns enabling coordinated orientation.
Mind is therefore the highest-order metabolism the universe has produced so far: an adaptive, dynamically reconfigurable system of horizon-modulating relational stances.
Life becomes aware of itself when its metabolic-horizon recursion deepens enough to construe its own orientations.
9. Life as the Universe Looking Back
By this point it is clear that life is not a unique phenomenon but the natural continuation of cosmic logic:
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Stars metabolise gradients; organisms metabolise gradients.
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Atoms stabilise horizons; cells stabilise horizons.
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Galaxies coordinate ecologies; biospheres coordinate ecologies.
Life is cosmic recursion made local and reflexive.
The universe is not made of things that become alive; it is made of relations that become recursively structured.
Life, then, is:
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