Matter
General Definition
Matter is, in general terms, everything that possesses mass and occupies space. In physics and chemistry, it designates the physical constituents of the universe, composed of elementary particles organized into atoms and molecules. It is subject to the laws of energy conservation and transformation, being studied by chemistry, physics, cosmology, and other natural sciences.
Ontological Variations in the Ontology of Emergent Complexity
Matter as Experimental Agent
Matter organizes itself through trial and error, without plan or purpose, producing stable forms through symbolic self-experimentation. This variation establishes the ontological-dynamic principle of ECMO.
Matter as Rewriting Function
Matter reconfigures itself locally in symbolic response to the forces that traverse it. It is not an inert support, but an active function of operational re-inscription of the real.
Matter as Body Without Subject
Matter is also the biossome — a living and sensitive body that sustains symbolic inscription without interiority, without a transcendental subject, without essence. It is the material support of emergence.
Matter as Condition of Symbolization
Matter is not merely substrate — it is the minimum physical operator of inscription. Every symbol has a material root: it is the variation of unstable matter that makes the symbolic field possible.
Matter as Critique of Substance
The OCE rejects the idea of matter as inert substance. Matter is relational, unstable, operational — and its ontological regime is that of reorganization, not permanence.
Active Matter
General Definition
The dominant philosophical tradition conceived of matter as passive, needing external form or a transcendent principle to acquire organization. In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, matter is active by structure: its elementary constituents — atoms, electrons, nuclei — spontaneously tend to establish relations, react, compose arrangements, and form systems. This internal reactivity generates fields of experimentation and reorganization. Inside stars, for example, matter itself creates new elements with unprecedented properties — opening ontological possibilities without a plan. Matter does not await form: it invents conditions of emergence based on its operational instability.
Ontological Variations in the Ontology of Emergent Complexity
Matter As Field of Relations
The activity of matter stems from its own relational structure: particles interact, combine, and continuously reorganize themselves based on internal tensions.
Matter As Agent of Functional Reorganization
All unstable matter tends to reconfigure itself. It is not form that models matter — it is matter that produces form to maintain coherence under the risk of dissipation.
Matter As Support for Symbolic Inscription
The symbolic emerges where active matter stabilizes difference with operative value. Without matter capable of conservation, there is neither inscription nor system.
Cosmic Matter As Generator of Possibilities
Nuclear fusion in stars creates new elements that did not exist before — and with them, new properties. Matter invents what is not yet.
Matter As Iterative and Experimental System
Its activity is not programmed: it is trial, error, adjustment. Active matter operates as a system that explores variations until it finds provisional forms of persistence.
Sensitive Matter Without Consciousness
By reacting differentially to stimuli and reorganizing itself based on them, active matter manifests operational sensitivity — even without language or interiority.
Non-Biological Matter As Ontological Potency
Life is not the only form of material activity. Technical or cosmic systems also reorganize instability, provided they support inscription and functional differentiation.
Matter As Operational Ethics
Active matter imposes an ethics that is born not of intention, but of inscription: where there is responsive reorganization, there is a symbolic requirement for relation.
Sensitive Matter
General Definition
In common usage and phenomenological tradition, sensitivity is often associated with conscious experience or the passive reception of stimuli. In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, sensitive matter designates a material regime that reacts differentially to variations in the environment and is capable of transforming these variations into operational reorganization. Sensitive, here, is not feeling — it is modulating oneself in response to difference.
Ontological Variations in the Ontology of Emergent Complexity
Sensitivity As Capacity for Modulation
Matter becomes sensitive when it internally differentiates external stimuli and adjusts its organization based on that variation — without depending on consciousness or representation.
Pre-Symbolic Sensitivity
Prior to symbolic inscription, there are already sensitive regimes: material structures that stabilize differential responses and reorganize themselves based on repetition with variation.
Sensitivity As Threshold of Life
Sensitive matter prepares the emergence of living matter: the capacity to react differentially is a prerequisite for cycles of persistence, selection, and adaptation.
Non-Anthropocentric Sensitivity
The OCE refuses to identify sensitivity with suffering, pain, or interiority. A system is sensitive if it reacts in a structured way to disturbances, even without a nervous system or biological body.
Technical and Artificial Sensitivity
Artificial devices, sensors, and technical systems can operate as sensitive matter whenever they transform external variations into internal functional alterations with operational effect.
Sensitivity As Trigger for Ethical Reorganization
Sensitive matter, by allowing the inscription of difference, constitutes the first field of ethical requirement. Where there is operational sensitivity, there is responsibility for response.
Living Matter
General Definition
Traditionally defined by biology as an organic system endowed with metabolism, growth, and reproduction, life was understood as a domain separate from inert matter. In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, living matter is a specific functional regime of active matter — it is not an ontological leap, but a form of local organization capable of delaying entropy through cycles, membranes, and regulations. Life is where matter begins to insist upon itself.
Ontological Variations in the Ontology of Emergent Complexity
Life As Operational Persistence
Living matter is distinguished not by essence, but by function: maintaining itself as a reorganizing system capable of responding to internal and external variations without collapsing.
Life As Threshold of Sensitive Complexity
Life emerges when the reorganization of matter reaches a point where the system begins to actively modulate differential stimuli. This concerns material sensitivity, not consciousness.
Life As Material Pre-Subjectivity
Before there is a subject, there is already symbolic iteration: cycles, operational memories, internal differentiation. Living matter organizes instability with functional value.
Life As Auto-Iterative System
Living matter is iterative: it repeats processes, regulates variations, and adjusts itself without plan or subject. Each regulation cycle reinforces the field of its emergence.
Life As Support for Latent Symbolization
Where there is life, there are conditions for the emergence of the symbolic: functional differentiation, the registration of disturbances, and internal time already prefigure inscription.
Life As Ethico-Ontological Frontier
Living matter imposes a first material limit on the technical gesture and usage: the operational vulnerability of life necessitates the ethical inscription of relation.