What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to propose a hierarchical model of matter that distinguishes between physical, biological, and civilizational forms, demonstrating their irreducibility to one another.

June 11, 2026Open Access

Three Forms of Matter: From Physics to Life and Civilization

Key Points

The aim is to propose a hierarchical model of matter that distinguishes between physical, biological, and civilizational forms, demonstrating their irreducibility to one another.
Establishing a hierarchical model categorizing matter into physical, biological, and civilizational levels.
Utilizing concepts like control, transcription, and information to define living systems beyond physical laws.
Analyzing historical perspectives from Engels, Fromm, and Cassirer on the distinctions between social and biological phenomena.
The study establishes that living matter is irreducible to non-living matter.
Civilization is posited as a unique form of matter, distinct and more complex than biological forms.
New metrological units, BioMU and Cognitium, are proposed to quantify biological and civilizational phenomena.

Abstract

This article proposes a hierarchical model of the organization of matter, comprising three qualitatively distinct levels: physical (non‑living), biological (living), and civilizational (cultural‑technological). It is shown that the transition between levels represents an emergent leap irreducible to mere complexification of the lower level. Drawing on the methodological precedent established by F.B. Shkundina (2016), according to which living systems possess phenomena of control, transcription, and information – concepts that have no counterpart in physics and chemistry – the thesis is substantiated: living matter is irreducible to non‑living matter. Next, based on the works of F. Engels (the biosocial nature of man), E. Fromm, and E. Cassirer, it is established that the social is irreducible to the purely biological. Labor, language, and symbolic thinking are supra‑biological phenomena. A third step is then introduced: civilization is a supra‑organismic, supra‑populational system possessing five features absent in living matter (including the social human as an individual): symbolic memory, memetic evolution, supra‑biological institutions, projective transformation of the environment, and technological memory outside the body. Since the living is irreducible to the non‑living, and the social to the biological, then by the same logic, civilization is irreducible to the living. This substantiates the hypothesis of civilization as a third form of matter. For the biological form, metrological units BioMU (bit, shannon, berridge, pöppel, merker) are introduced; for the civilizational form, Cognitium (sem, dawkins, otto, turchin). The model serves as a common foundation for physics, biology, sociology, information theory, and SETI, requiring no metaphysical assumptions. The place of particular models (e.g., Eigen‘s hypercycle) within this ontological framework is discussed. Keywords: three forms of matter, emergence, BioMU, Cognitium, SETI, hypercycle, Shkundina, Engels.

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