The Quantum Theory of Life (QTL): A Biorealistic Framework for Active Coherence Maintenance

We introduce the Quantum Theory of Life (QTL), a biorealistic physical frameworkthat operationalizes living systems as non-equilibrium phase transitions actively sustainingquantum coherence against environmental decoherence pathways. Rejecting spectatorcollapsehypotheses and speculative consciousness postulates, QTL grounds biological agencystrictly in open quantum system dynamics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Wedemonstrate that living systems maintain functional superpositions within a non-Markovianprotected subspace (HP ) while directionally executing state transitions through a dissipativegating channel (HG). Furthermore, high-frequency biomolecular vibrations act via motionalnarrowing and dynamical decoupling to shield coherence, continuously sustained by a drivenmetabolic entropy-export fee. Finally, we propose two explicit, experimentally falsifiable 2Dspectroscopic protocols to test active coherence maintenance in intracellular complexes.