  We extend the concept that life is an informational phenomenon, at every
level of organisation, from molecules to the global ecological system.
According to this thesis: (a) living is information processing, in which memory
is maintained by both molecular states and ecological states as well as the
more obvious nucleic acid coding; (b) this information processing has one
overall function - to perpetuate itself; and (c) the processing method is
filtration (cognition) of, and synthesis of, information at lower levels to
appear at higher levels in complex systems (emergence). We show how information
patterns, are united by the creation of mutual context, generating persistent
consequences, to result in `functional information'. This constructive process
forms arbitrarily large complexes of information, the combined effects of which
include the functions of life. Molecules and simple organisms have already been
measured in terms of functional information content; we show how quantification
may be extended to each level of organisation up to the ecological. In terms of
a computer analogy, life is both the data and the program and its biochemical
structure is the way the information is embodied. This idea supports the
seamless integration of life at all scales with the physical universe. The
innovation reported here is essentially to integrate these ideas, basing
information on the `general definition' of information, rather than simply the
statistics of information, thereby explaining how functional information
operates throughout life.
