One way to define life is by what it is not, by pointing out the differences between living things and inanimate matter. Also I believe that the way to understand the inanimate universe is to be sure that we are seeing it the way it really is by separating out our own nature from what the inanimate universe is without us.
Color is the first thing which comes to mind that does not really exist in the inanimate universe. There is really no such thing as red or blue or green outside of ourselves. Color is just the way our eyes and brains interpret different wavelengths of the visible light that we can see. Have you ever seen anything that is color-coded, such as signs or wires? Well, the way we see it, everything is actually color-coded.
Optical illusions, of course, do not really exist. There is really no blue sky or rainbows or sun dogs. Optical illusions are even less real than colors.
Words do not exist at all outside of our vocabulary. Everything is really numbers being manifested. Numbers do exist but words don't. Words are just a high-level perspective view of ours.
What I refer to as "Truth Pairs" do not exist outside of ourselves and other living things. There is no such thing as true or false, negative and positive, good and bad, or right and wrong. There are the electric charges that we refer to as positive and negative, but that is just a matter of our definition. True and false is just a matter of our perspective. We are more complex than our inanimate surroundings and so there is not enough information there for everything that we can conceive of to be true, so we perceive true and false. But, outside of living consciousness there is no such thing as false.
The peak, or optimum, factor is seen only in living things. It does not exist in the universe of inanimate matter. Living things have optimum conditions and amounts of such things as temperatures, food, physical activity and, sleep. This optimum tends to reach a peak, after which it declines. Processes in inanimate matter, such as flames and stars, just have a condition of the more matter, fuel or oxygen the better, which is an upward slope and not the peak pattern.
Quality and quantity is often referred to in human dealings. But in the universe of inanimate matter there is no such thing as quality, there is only quantity. Quality is just a perspective of living things.
Beauty is a form of quality that absolutely does not exist in the universe of inanimate matter. There is only numbers being manifested. There is no such thing as verbal description or quality or beauty.
In the universe of inanimate reality there is no such thing as a coincidence. This is just a random reduction in apparent complexity, as seen from our perspective. You see a person at the bus station on one side of town, and then just happen to run into them in the store on the other side of town. In the inanimate universe there is no such thing as a coincidence because it is only something that is perceived by beings of higher complexity than our surroundings, such as ourselves.
Sometimes we hear a saying like "It's an art not an exact science". This represents what I refer to as "realm sets". I define realm sets as either simple or complex. Simple and complex realm sets tend to exist in pairs. A simple realm is where a statement has to be either true or false. A complex realm is where two opposite statements can both be true. An obvious example of a simple realm is mathematics. An example of a complex realm is politics or economics, two opposite opinions can both have some validity, and the best position may be a compromise between the two. Mathematics is a simple realm not only because a mathematical statement must be either true or false but because we must completely understand something to describe it with numbers. Science is related to mathematics but we can use words, instead of numbers, to describe something that we do not completely understand. Art is a more complex realm than science because, unlike science or mathematics, art cannot really be "wrong" or incorrect. It is an expression of the effect that something has on the artist, rather than precise facts or measurements about it.
Entropy is often cited as a primary principle of how the universe operates. Entropy favors one direction over the opposite direction, the breaking down of the complex into the simple. An often-cited example of entropy is the placing of an open bottle of ink in an aquarium full of water. The ink will gradually disperse throughout the water. The principle of entropy is that it is a lot easier for the ink to disperse from the bottle throughout the water than it is for the ink to go back into the bottle. But every meaningful example of entropy that I have ever seen involves either living things, such as the complexity of a body being broken down after death, or things that have been made by living things, such as the bottle of ink and the aquarium. There is no meaningful examples of entropy in the universe of inanimate matter.
Negative numbers do not really exist. Our number system has a number line of positive numbers in one direction and negative numbers in the opposite direction. By convention two negative numbers multiplied produces a positive number, a positive and a negative number multiplied produces a negative number and two positive numbers multiplied produces a positive number. Adding a negative number to a positive number is the same as subtracting the number from the positive number. But my conclusion is that negative numbers do not exist in the universe of inanimate reality. Negative numbers have a starting point of zero and there cannot be less than nothing. Negative numbers exist only in things of human creation, such as debt. Temperature scales have below zero temperatures but these scales are of artificial human creation. A correct scale of temperature, in line with how the inanimate universe operates, begins at Absolute Zero so that there is no negative temperatures.
In the inanimate universe there is no such thing as top and bottom, front and back, or left and right. Planets and stars rotate, with a north and a south pole. But neither pole can really meaningfully be said to be the "top" or the "bottom" of the planet or star. It is only living things, or things made by living things such as houses, that have a definable top and bottom. The same can be said for front and back. No star or planet or galaxy has a meaningful front and back. But it is only living things with free will, including humans, that have a meaningful front and back. Plants have a definable top and bottom, but not a front and back. There is no such thing as the front and back of a tree. Left and right, of course, is meaningless in the universe of inanimate matter because defining it requires a front and back. I see the fact that people tend to be left- or right-handed as a matter of complexity. Left- or right-handedness is information and is a result of the brain being more complex than the body.
Alphabetization, as I refer to it, does not exist in the universe of inanimate matter. Alphabetization means something that doesn't make sense except as a subdomain of a larger whole. Consider a human foot, for example, a foot by itself doesn't make any sense, except as part of the human body. But that is not true at all of an inanimate object, such as a rock. A rock makes just as much sense whether it is within a planet, on the surface of the planet, or floating around in space.
Here is a link to a posting about the same subject, "The Universe With Us And Without Us":
http://markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-universe-with-us-and-without-us.html?m=0
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