Note 170

Where the chemically-defined status ends, life ends. The organismic corpse confirms this statement. The living substance is a static molecular closed construct. There are no living systems, but only living substances, existing as living single molecules, and at most to be viewed as single-molecular systems. There are also no living independent submolecules, which, without a genuine bonding connection, cannot constitute the organism differently from the way dead molecules constitute a crystal or constitute an unstable colloid-chemical pseudo-system. Just as little as one can say that a higher organism is realized by the congregation of  simple  cells (also meant in the phenomena of ontogenetic cell-division and growth), one can say that Life may be generated by congregation of  simple  not yet living matter. The with the latter connected concepts such as colloid-chemical super-complexes, open systems in dynamic equilibrium, dynamical structures, are not particularly revealing. Their relative emptiness becomes especially clear from the facts of embryology, of the transition from a minute unicellular, and therefore not cellularly differentiated, germ into a highly differentiated complex organismic structure.

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