Toward a universal geometry of life

Implications for biological theory and astrobiology

Abstract

Current evolutionary theory provides detailed accounts of biological diversity, but it still lacks a framework capable of describing the geometric-topological structures in a unified way that living systems produce. Physical and chemical processes can generate only a limited variety of geometric forms, whereas biological morphogenesis explores a much larger and more complex region of morphospace. This distinction has important implications for paleobiology, the biology, and astrobiology: if life produces geometries unavailable to physical-chemical non-living processes, then geometry itself may serve as a universal biosignature. I argue that developing a general morphogeometric theory of life is both conceptually necessary and practically valuable for identifying life in the geological record and beyond Earth.