This aromorphosis – the process where not the entire atom but its electron clouds enter into reactions – produced chemical reactions under suitable conditions at an appropriate stage in the expansion of the universe, leading to the ordering of physical processes in time and space.

Just as carbon chemistry is the key process for life, the emergence of atoms with electron clouds was the key process for chemistry. This represents the new order of physical interactions that gave rise to chemical reactions. Out of a vast number of elementary particles and their combinations, atoms became the "carbon" for chemistry – they ignited the fire of chemical reactions.

I previously identified weaknesses in my definitions, but I liked them nonetheless because they personally helped me understand the evolution of matter – from physical forms to biological ones, and eventually to intelligent and superintelligent forms. Later, I delved into specifics. I reflected on physical reactions and viruses – whether they are alive or not. I concluded that their life is facultative; they are dualistic in nature and cannot be considered independently of cells, as, outside of cells, life does not exist. For practical reasons, we often consider viruses to be alive. However, in reality, viruses do not live outside of cells. One could say they are genomes outside of cells that, under suitable conditions, modify the genomes of bacterial or multicellular organisms and compete with them for cellular organization. The goal of this competition is to win the vertical race for the transmission of genetic information.

A virus is a parasitic genome. It is not alive, just as any genome outside of a cell is not alive. As a result of evolution, some genomes learned to persist outside of cells. This is a degenerative pathway of life and likely the first degeneration to occur in the living world. Viruses did not produce the diversity we later saw in multicellular organisms, but they are still alive to this day! They are more alive than the living and often outcompete living organisms, as evidenced by the recent coronavirus pandemic. These companions of life are not outsiders; their strategies are highly successful, and they are indestructible as long as life exists.

It is clear that for life – for this chemical factory – a compartment is necessary, whether it be a coacervate droplet, a bacterium, a cyanobacterium, or some other simple organism. The orderliness of this factory is such that the chemical processes within it sustain themselves, and entropy is minimal or approaches zero. For example, the orderliness of chemical transformations at a pharmaceutical factory is also significant, but that does not make the factory alive – the chemical processes there cannot sustain themselves. Without the participation of technologies created by intelligence, the factory cannot live or reproduce. The moment the technological process halts, everything reverts to an inert, chaotic process with increasing entropy.

Later, I became intrigued by questions such as: How did eukaryotes evolve from bacteria and cyanobacteria? Is the eukaryotic cell essentially the simplest two-celled organism with two distinct genomes – the first chimera? Was it the first parasite turned symbiont, and why did such cells gain the potential to eventually give rise to multicellular organisms? And what are multicellular organisms, really? Where do we begin? With flagellated Volvox? With sponges? With the freshwater polyp Hydra? With worms? Clearly, there were intermediate forms, some of which are still known to us today. However, it’s not a fact that these currently existing intermediate forms represent the transitional stages on the path of aromorphosis. Perhaps these are newly emerged cellular associations that appeared in the more recent past.