All of life has one fundamental thing in common. In fact this one commonality is one of the most important things that separate the living from the non-living. This one thing is that life becomes more organized over time. This idea sounds simple but has far-reaching ramifications. Life began here on Earth as a series of chemical reactions that eventually evolved to bacteria and one-celled beings. Billions of years later evolution produced the most complex biological beings on the planet; humans. This evolution from the simple to the complex will continue for eons to come. It is a fundamental process of life.
There are thousands of systems in our bodies that work to maintain their biological complexity and keep us alive. These systems are commonly called homeostatic mechanisms. They work to maintain a narrow range of values of many substances. They also work to keep all of the systems in our bodies working together sustaining our complex bodies. For example, blood pressure is regulated by a myriad of systems that maintain just the right amount of fluid in our blood, the right amount of constriction of our arteries and the right heart rate. All of these systems work in harmony to support our lives. If something goes wrong with one system the others attempt to correct the problem. If the problem is severe enough the entire system fails and jeopardizes the body's health.
If perfect homeostasis means perfect health, then anything interfering with this perfection would cause a movement away from organization or complexity toward disorganization. The system no longer works in harmony with the body but now wreaks havoc with the delicate balance of health. A prime example of this is cancer cells. Cancerous cells mutate and divide wildly, spreading their disorganization locally at first, then throughout the rest of the body. This disorganization flies in the face of homeostasis. It goes against the fundamental process of life.
In fact when we die our bodies join the rest of the universe and become more disorganized. At death our bodies first reach a state of equilibrium and then begin their path toward greater disorganization by decaying. The once perfectly balanced being now slowly dissipates molecule by molecule until all of its atoms become reabsorbed into the earth.
So what then is the essence of the stuff that sustains us? What is it that supports all of these homeostatic mechanisms? The answer to this question is a complex one and encompasses concepts of matter, energy and information. One day we will understand this not in terms of matter or energy but something even more fundamental. We will see that at the core of life is the exchange of units of information. Information is what sustains every system in our bodies, information is what keeps disorganization at bay.
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