Life as Directed Causality: A Thermodynamic Isomorphism Between Being and Acting

How does purposive agency emerge in a universe of blind physical laws? This paper answers by deriving and defending: T6: The Life‐Agency Isomorphism Theorem: Life and minimal agency are isomorphic. A system is alive if and only if it possesses Hormē (the striving to persist), and it possesses Hormē if and only if it is an agent. I argue that Hormē (Ὁρμή) is not a metaphor but a measurable thermodynamic state: the continuous work performed by a far-from-equilibrium system to maintain its boundaries. This constitutes the capacity to “direct causal flow”—altering the stream of cause and effect to secure persistence. By identifying this shared physical basis, the framework dissolves two persistent philosophical gaps: the Life/Mind Gap, by showing agency is the thermodynamic condition of life; and the Mechanism/Teleology Gap, by demonstrating that purposiveness is the immanent logic of dissipative structures. Finally, I sketch how this agency scales evolutionarily—from bacterial taxis to the human Nous (the meta-cognitive capacity for abstraction and self-modeling)—providing a naturalistic foundation for intrinsic normativity. Keywords: agency, teleonomy, autopoiesis, thermodynamics, Hormē, philosophy of biology, en- activism, dissipative structures, Life-Mind Continuity, Life-Agency Isomorphism, Mechanism- Teleology Gap