...The Origin of Substance continued
Borderline Substance
Science has a specific definition of substance. Substance is a kind of matter. It is the bulk matter that engineers call material. Substance is not just a formless swarm of molecules, like those on the molecular side of the border. Substance has form and character. It has characteristic properties, and generally with a definite composition independent of its origins. The glob has character too, of course, but its characteristics are largely metaphysical. Substance has scientific character; that is, it is composed of atoms and molecules and certainly tolerates voids.
When molecules coalesce into substance they form a body. In doing so, molecules form a system. It is improbable that the initial system of substance is gas. It is more probable that it is liquid. But liquid too lacks form. Liquid lacks a specific architecture. However, a gas in a liquid has form. It's a bubble. Nature prescribes a precise architecture for a bubble. The countervailing forces between the gas and the surrounding liquid generate surface tension and this stress gives the bubble a physical architecture with scientific character, to wit: "A spherical bubble of radius R, formed in a liquid for which the surface tension is T, contains air (or some other gas or vapor) at a pressure which exceeds that in the liquid in its immediate vicinity by 2T/r."2
A bubble can float on a liquid and even float freely in a gas, if the molecules of its surface associate to form a film. A free-floating bubble, of course, is a more complicated bubble. For example, the film of a soap bubble has two surfaces, so "the excess pressure within a soap bubble in air is 4T/r."3 This formula, like the foregoing one, is a function of nature. Both are the result of scientific observation, experimentation, and measurement. There are no such formulas for the glob, because the glob is an icon, a relic with only ethereal substance.
The bubble is the first system of substance. It is the primordial cell. Some might argue that a particle is the first order of substance. But a particle lacks a defined composition independent of its origin. It lacks common architecture. Particles have random architectures, which are largely a matter of chance. In other words, the vaguely defined particle lacks systemic character. The bubble is the most ephemeral systematic union of substances because of its precise architecture. While its skin is liquid, a bubble is mostly gas. A particle on the other hand is solid, although most real particles certainly contain one or more substantive voids. Unlike particles, bubbles merge upon contact. Merged in sufficient number, bubbles can "dry" to form a particle.
continued 
2 Cambridge Dictionary of Science and Technology, ed. Peter M. B. Walker (Edinburgh, W & R Chambers Ltd., 1990) p. 706.
3 Ibid.