The Mechanism of Life

This work offers a physico-chemical account of living phenomena, proposing that the contact and differential concentration of solutions—electrolytic and colloidal—produce diffusion, osmosis, cohesion, and crystallization processes that can generate life-like structures. It argues life may be understood as transformations of matter and energy, and illustrates experimentally how osmotic growths mimic growth, circulation, movement, repair, and budding. Organized around experiments and theory, the text surveys molecular forces, periodicity, karyokinesis, energetics, synthetic biology, morphogenesis, and the implications for spontaneous generation and evolution, treating the boundary between animate and inanimate as gradual.