Science’s Elusive Realm: Life’s Little Mysteries. The new Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM) at Los Alamos studies what prominent scientists calls the ‘mesoscale,’ between the realm of molecules describable in quantum mechanical terms and the realm of the cell where well-described biological theory holds sway. Difficult to investigate, it is the level on which cell constituents interact with one another and the elucidation of its organizing principles and deeper theory will help us “to understand and maybe even design matter that organizes itself into living systems… To start with, ICAM researchers are focusing on one beguiling fact: complex
systems can arise out of simple constituents that interact with each other in ways
not necessarily obvious”, looking at, for example, the mystery of protein folding.

” ‘We are letting nature tell us what it likes to do.’ … Such experiments have
extraordinary implications… Unlike vitalism — a doctrine that says
the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry
alone and that life is in some way self-determining — the research into complex
adaptive matter says that life is the consequence of molecular interactions.

‘If we can discover organizing principles in biology other than evolution, it means
we will be able to make living systems in the laboratory. We
can understand how life began.’ ” New York Times