This clarified not only the directionality of chemical processes in the biological environment but also encompassed all those organelles, membranes, compartments, mitoses, meioses, and so on, which are sustained by this orderliness. In my view, this meant that the system is open, and its orderliness leads to the system’s self-maintenance. I understood "orderliness" in the spirit of thermodynamic systems' concepts of order [16].
Why specifically chemical reactions? Because, in my view, life originated through chemical reactions.
It very accurately reflects the essence of the life we know on planet Earth and, of course, incorporates the idea of the orderliness of chemical reactions. Enzymatic systems are systems of biochemical catalysis, and the term "hierarchy" directly points to orderliness.I also liked another definition of life, given by Professor V.R. Bogdanov: "Life is a hierarchy of enzymatic systems."
My definition is more general; it implies the possibility of other forms of life we do not yet know about – life built on different biochemical principles, not based on nucleic acids or proteins, whose primary quality is the orderliness of chemical reactions.
The formula of orderliness in chemical processes led me to think about what each subsequent form of matter movement represents in relation to the previous one. It is the ordering of a new quality of substance that has emerged. Chemical reactions made the existence of molecules possible, vastly increased the combinations of elementary particles and atoms, and reduced the energy costs of these processes. While the number of chemical elements generated by the physical form of matter movement is measured in dozens, the number of chemical compounds, even in inert matter, is measured in hundreds and thousands – not to mention organic, biological, and man-made chemistry.
This aromorphosis – the process where not the entire atom but its electron clouds enter into reactions – produced chemical reactions under suitable conditions at an appropriate stage in the expansion of the universe, leading to the ordering of physical processes in time and space.
Just as carbon chemistry is the key process for life, the emergence of atoms with electron clouds was the key process for chemistry. This represents the new order of physical interactions that gave rise to chemical reactions. Out of a vast number of elementary particles and their combinations, atoms became the "carbon" for chemistry – they ignited the fire of chemical reactions.