There is a surface and a flow over it (through it).
The surface is composed of self-stable microparts. Frozen, the microparts remain unchanging in their geometric relations to one another. Changes upon the frozen surface are engravings, geometric records of the past flow to a viewer who supposes an initial frozen state.
The surface transforms under the flow; parts are permuted, each micropart constituent stable in its algebraic identity whether or not it flows into or out of the surface.
There is a partition of the surface in which every part may be re-produced by further permutation of the surface under the flow. Differences in flows over reproduced parts alters them away from "perfect" identity with their. The surface maintains connection (and integration) under continual permutation by "reversing damage" via replication. This goes as much for "locally stable" components such as cells as for fluctuating components; a body with ATP maintains itself by destroying ATP ad producing more ATP under a digestive flow of glucose-transformable material (and its atmospheric-gravitational flows).
The flow may be altered slightly without altering any of these aspects. But if it is constrained enough or increased enough in any "direction", the surface will cease to transform under the flow - it loses its ability to produce itself. As irreversible damage to this ability increases, production approaches disintegration. Simply withdrawing thermoynamic energy from the system by cooling it is one way to disintegrate production: continuity of connection ceases with motion.
We want to allow the flow to change at different times, particularly in multi-stage organisms. They might grow parts or abandon them; hence strict uniform reproducibility doesn't capture a life cycle. In fact growing systems are the rule - you have to have grown to be grown. This generalization is easy to state.
For an organism, we expect a path has been taken through the environment (even if 'stationary' geographically, the changing of sun and seasons constitutes a 'change of place' over time) which resulted in a flow at every moment. We expect (original!)/copy/spore/zygote which permuted under a changing flow to the current state and flow. Since parts' flows vary based on their situation with respect to one another, not all variation in production/flow is "external." Flows allow parts to produce versions of themselves more quickly than they die; heterogeneity of flows over even nearly identical copies (regardless of whether modulation originates 'inside' or 'out') may lead to differentiation and specialization, with the ability to self-produce.
We expect at any moment, parts were reproduced the available flows in the past, or partially present at the origin. Hence a living system may be unable to reproduce every component within it in the presence of future flows; in fact we expect to one day die and stop self-producing altogether.
Furthermore, present and future flows may allow growth of parts not present or producible by permutations under present flows. A starvation flow may not allow self-production, but if increased before crucial points (irreversible transformations), future growth and production can be expected.
In this way we can separate death from dormancy. For instance, a seed need not have growth flows in order to be considered 'alive.' Given a future flow, it will have the ability not only to self-produce but to birth versions of its current self, either alone or by coupling with another seed's products. So long as the life cycle is unbroken, life "is happening."
Therefore it is clear that any population is as much a living system as any of its constituents. Indeed, any group of organisms, even the entirety of life on Earth, constitutes an unbroken genealogical chain of production, with the reproduction of the ability of self-reproduction as the intersection between productive chain links.
Life is a continuous phenomenon; if reproduction stops, it will not tend to restart.
Life's current persistence implies continuity since its first birth (or births).
(What do I mean by a "flow over a surface"?
The microscopic body is porous on many scales (in different places). When energetic material connects, it may fit through these holes. Such holes, in elastic structure, may simply be energy transferred through it, from inside to border to outside. Many of them seem to be more or less deliberate pathways, particularly in cell membranes, a vital counterflow to the aquatic or half-aquatic environment established to pull in particular molecular configurations. Establishing body pressure to counter the environment's is a way of doing this on a macroscopic scale. Any structure which keeps material out/in (serves as a barrier to some part of the environment) can have holes through which the environment flows.
A "surface" is simply a connotative word for a persistent and otherwise (without heat) solid geometric structure which intersects a flow.)
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