1. An Intensified Universe

A living thing is an event that intensifies something novel in the universe. The emergence and development of living organisms is not a rupture that introduces something novel into the universe, nor is it the mere continuation of physico-chemical novelties which occurred when there were no existent living things anywhere in the universe. Even though living things are local events, which are mere fractions of the objective universe, living things are also events that considerably intensify the universe. Living things augment the universe more than formally (by simply adding new things). Living things give value to the universe (by adding things which are more than what they are).

The emergence of living things does not mark the passage to another universe, nor the perpetuation of the same universe. It consists neither in an irreducible rupture with the physical universe, a qualitative leap, nor in a pure and simple continuation, whereby living things could have been potentially comprehended in the antecedent properties of matter. The emergence of living objects is the intensification of certain structures of the material universe, that is, the local growth of certain mechanisms and properties, including the phenomenon of self-transmission. This intensification does not mean that living things were potentially contained in inanimate things, but only that what we call 'living things' corresponds to a certain degree of intensity in the relation between the being and comprehension of objects of the universe. Intensity is not formal – since formally everything is equal – but objective. Therefore, life cannot be derived from the flat world of things, which is altogether extensive and without intensity. Objectively, on the other hand, in the universe, which is constituted by objects that more or less comprehend each other, everything is subject to variable intensities. In the universe, thoroughly objective (non-formalisable, non-derivative) conditions allow objects to self-intensify.