What question did this study set out to answer?

The research aims to redefine life as a non-equilibrium state, focusing on how material codes like DNA and RNA persist through lineage.

February 9, 2026Open Access

The Law of the Mandatory Stage of Non-Equilibrium in the Historical Persistence of Material Codes

Key Points

The research aims to redefine life as a non-equilibrium state, focusing on how material codes like DNA and RNA persist through lineage.
Proposes a minimal ontological correction regarding life as a transient physical regime.
Distinguishes between code-token and code-lineage in the context of material persistence.
Explores implications for autopoiesis and information theory through a physical lens.
Demonstrates that persistence relies on mandatory non-equilibrium stages to prevent informational degradation.
Illustrates the virus as a paused code-token reliant on external active stages.
Explains the high energetic costs associated with stability in tissues like the intestinal epithelium.

Abstract

A minimal ontological correction is proposed. What is conventionally called “life” is neither an entity nor a stable property, but a transient physical regime of non-equilibrium in which material codes—such as deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid—persist historically only as lineages, because they are continuously maintained and retransmitted. The thesis distinguishes (i) the code-token, a concrete and degradable material instance of evanescent existence, and (ii) the code-lineage, defined as the historical continuity of a pattern through successive acts of copying, repair, and maintenance. From this distinction, persistence in the biosphere is explained as a succession of mandatory stages of non-equilibrium: outside the active stage, the risk of informational degradation increases and retransmission ceases. To situate the proposal within the state of the art, the law is presented as a physical condition of possibility for (a) autopoiesis, (b) information theory, and (c) origin-of-life models centered on gradients and flow, explicitly articulating the “bit–watt” bridge, understood here as the link between the informational substrate and the power dissipated in its maintenance. The ontology is then applied to two ontological stress tests: (1) the virus, understood as a paused code-token that persists only by coupling to an external active stage; and (2) the intestinal epithelium, whose apparent stability is sustained by a high energetic cost in a rapidly renewing tissue. Scope note. Here, “material code” refers specifically to biological informational patterns (deoxyribonucleic acid, ribonucleic acid, and functional analogs) in the biosphere. Extensions to other material replicators are possible but require dedicated analysis. Technological or mineral informational patterns may persist, but they require additional criteria to be treated as autonomous lineages in the sense of this law, since their production and maintenance depend on external biological active stages.

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