Greetings. Though it is difficult to address much of your essay here, I will hit a few items in cursory manner here:
1. Living systems have a cybernetic organizational structure. Non living systems don't. That is a key.
2. If life evolves by chemical organizational emergence, then it must follow that the lowly Helium atom (from which everything in this universe evolved) has IN ITSELF all of the organizational potential (including the seeds of emergence) already present in it. True reductionism must account for this, not just the fig leaf of Darwinism.
3. The central dogma is wrong. Genes are just the "dumb building block" level at root of the cybernetic organism. Epigenetics uses genes as it will, much as a mechanic uses tools. But, epigenetics is driven/controlled by cellular response to environment. But that environment is controlled by the larger (organ) signals, etc. All cybernetics.
4. To attempt any real understanding of biology, one must find the highest cybernetic level and determine its properties. This will be found at the electo-dynamic level of the so-called morpho-genetic field (top down organizing principle).
5. At a metaphysical level, Swedenborg introduces the idea of correspondences as the next higher level above the M-GF. By that principle, "living" is a nearly arbitrary designation. Certainly, without the organizing field or correspondence, no meaningful division between "living" and "non-living" is possible or meaningful, because all of the "effects" flowing from physical structures will certainly appear to be mechanistic with an appearance at the deepest level of feedback (or regressive loop) "control layer" emergence - which is true, but loop control is from a higher level, not from "dumb level" reactance to stimuli.
6. I recommend investigation of Cybernetic control, Morpho-genetic fields and Swedenborgs elucidation of Correspondences. In them, you will likely find what you are looking for.
