Imagine a river. Its water is made up of countless particles with unpredictable trajectories. But all the particles have a preferential direction: that of the river’s flow. Now imagine a fish swimming in this river. The fish also comprises countless particles, each traveling along an unpredictable path. But together, they participate in an orderly orchestration that allows the fish to swim and maintain its shape. This orderly movement consumes energy: gravitational, in the flow of the river, and chemical, in the fish.

The analogy between river water and fish suggests a unifying principle capable of explaining living behavior in the same way as the flow of a river. What is this principle? Is it possible to encompass the long-term evolution of species, without similarities in non-living systems? This project aims to find answers to this type of problem in physics, particularly in the area of dissipative systems outside thermodynamic equilibrium.