This paper identifies the minimal structural mechanism that makes the transition from chemistry to life possible. Instead of treating life as a special substance, a statistical anomaly, or a collection of biological features, the paper shows how living systems arise when a set of generic operators come together: collapse, mediation, constraint propagation, boundary formation, and directional persistence. These operators transform an undirected chemical manifold into a system capable of maintaining itself, reducing uncertainty, and generating coherent behavior across scales. The account explains why life emerges only under specific structural conditions, why it exhibits directionality, and why it forms a stable class distinct from non‑living chemistry. The result is a domain‑neutral mechanism that clarifies what life is in structural terms and how the transition to living organization becomes possible without invoking special substances, improbable events, or biological assumptions.
Denis Bailey (2026) studied this question.