Abstract
We suggest that a single field vector Φ be used to characterize a living organism, where Φ is the electromagnetic field due to the time-varying electric charge distribution within the organism. This representation has interesting advantages over the traditional biological description universally given in terms of visible characteristics. The H field is easily generalized to include species, and it leads naturally to a novel biological concept, that of the “supergenome,” covering all life as a whole. It is also consistent with an operational definition of the interaction between environment and genome, resulting in an alternate way of thinking about the evolutionary process. In this view, the meaning of environment is widened to include natural selection, and evolution is regarded as little more than the accommodation of living things to physical laws.