What question did this study set out to answer?

This article aims to establish a hierarchical model of matter, demonstrating that civilization represents a distinct form of matter separate from biological and non-living systems.

June 12, 2026Open Access

Third Form of Matter: From Non-Living and Living to Civilization

Key Points

This article aims to establish a hierarchical model of matter, demonstrating that civilization represents a distinct form of matter separate from biological and non-living systems.
Proposes a hierarchical model of matter with three levels: physical, biological, and civilizational.
Establishes irreducibility of living matter to non-living and social aspects to biological through theoretical frameworks.
Introduces new metrological units for biological and civilizational forms.
Demonstrates that living systems exhibit control and information phenomena absent in non-living matter.
Establishes civilization as possessing unique characteristics like symbolic memory and technological memory, which are not part of biological systems.
Positions this model as foundational for integrating disciplines such as physics, biology, and sociology without metaphysical assumptions.

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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