ONTOLOGY OF MATHEMATICAL METABIOLOGY: Panspatial Genesis and the Universal Architecture of Life

Abstract

This paper develops the Ontology of Mathematical Metabiology (OMM) as a substrate-general framework for understanding life through persistent partial closure rather than through any single chemistry. A living system is characterized as an identity-bearing organization that maintains selective boundaries and usable gradients, transforms environmental disequilibrium into self-maintenance, preserves generative information, repairs and adaptively reconfigures its organization, and can transmit closure-building capacity through time. The framework distinguishes ontological negentropy - the relational organization that physically persists - from standard thermodynamic entropy and from a proposed epistemic entropy associated with unresolved multiplicity under closure. It integrates the earlier OMM concepts of coherence selection, relational resonance, coherence-mass, hyperfractal organization, Finsler geometry, algorithmic evolution, and environmental deviation with a later closure-topological formalism. Panspatial Genesis is introduced as the study of transitions from nonliving organization to recursively self-maintaining living closure, while evolution is interpreted as historical exploration of viable closure architectures and major evolutionary transitions as the emergence of deeper closure levels. The framework extends from protocells through multicellular organization, regeneration, cognition, and observer closure, while explicitly separating functional selfmodeling from unresolved claims about phenomenal consciousness. Carbon biology, synthetic systems, and speculative cryogenic and plasma realizations are compared under a common functional architecture. An experimental program based on perturbation, recovery, closure memory, multiscale coupling, directional state-space geometry, and Genesis thresholds is proposed together with explicit falsification conditions. Life is usually defined by the chemistry we know on Earth. Metabiology asks a deeper question: what would remain true about life if the chemistry changed completely? The central proposal is that life is maintained difference that maintains itself. A living system keeps an inside different from an outside, preserves useful gradients, uses those gradients to perform work, retains information about its organization, repairs itself when disturbed, and changes when necessary to remain viable. These processes form a partially closed network: the system must be separate enough to remain itself but open enough to exchange matter, energy, and information with its environment. This framework connects the origin of cells, development, evolution, regeneration, cognition, possible synthetic life, and the search for life beyond Earth. It also gives a practical challenge: any proposed metric of life must distinguish living self-maintenance from nonliving order such as crystals, flames, vortices, and chemical oscillators.Metabiology; closure; partial closure; coherence; negentropy; information invariance; biogenesis; Panspatial Genesis; relational resonance; Finsler geometry; hyperfractal organization; evolution; cognition; synthetic life; astrobiology.OMM is presented as a theoretical research program, not as an established replacement for molecular biology, thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, or existing origin-of-life research.