What is Life?

It came in my Google Alert for "prions" - an absolutely wonderful essay titled, What Is Life? from Absent-Minded Science.

Here are three of the opening paragraphs:

Unfortunately, every definition of life provided thus far runs into serious problems. Aristotle perhaps said it best: “Nothing is true of that which is changing.” In other words, if all is in flux – as all things are – then static definitions of physical phenomena are literally impossible, including life. This is a fundamental limitation that is too rarely acknowledged in modern science and philosophy. We may carve out generally workable definitions, as rules of thumb (heuristics) for deeper study, but we must always acknowledge that any definition regarding physical phenomena that ignores the truth of flux fails from the outset.

Numerous modern biologists have attempted to answer the question: What is life? J.B.S. Haldane, the 20th Century British biologist, a giant in his field, began a short essay – “What is Life”? – by stating, however: “I am not going to answer this question.” He recognized the difficulties and stayed away from any definition. There are also three books from the 20th Century alone, with the same title, which do attempt to answer this eons-old question.

Erwin Schrödinger, a paragon of modern physics well-known for his role in shaping quantum theory, described in his little 1935 masterpiece What is Life? the concept of negative entropy, or negentropy, as the defining characteristic of life. Contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which asserts that the general tendency in our universe is for order to decay into disorder – entropy – the tendency of life, indeed the very defining characteristic of life, is the opposite. Schrödinger defines life by its ability to create order out of disorder, to defy the trends that inanimate matter must otherwise inexorably follow.

And this, from towards the end:

Aristotle wrote, two and a half thousand years ago: “Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.” Dupre and O’Malley reach the same conclusion in their paper, proposing a continuum approach to life that stresses collaboration.

If you can’t establish where the line of demarcation lies it makes little sense to posit any line at all. ...

...Life is simply shorthand for the complexity of matter and mind – which are two aspects of the same thing. That is, each real thing is both matter and mind. We apply the label of “life” as a matter of convenience to more complex forms of matter and mind. But there is no point at which a particular collection of matter suddenly becomes alive. Life does not “emerge.” (Life does, however, disappear rather suddenly, from particular organisms, as we are reminded all too often. Death becomes, in this view of life, a matter of different levels of organization: when a given organism dies, its status as a unitary subject, a unitary organism, disappears even as its constituents may keep on living. I will be fleshing out my thoughts on death in later essays.)

This view of life and consciousness as two terms for the same phenomenon provides a unifying framework for physics, biology and the study of consciousness. While the particular tools for studying phenomena within each field as we know it today will remain different in practice, having a unifying philosophical framework can be helpful in reaching new insights.

My kind of thinker!

I have something.

Life is a motion, when in it not realised, can be anything that can be. Life is linked to love. Life can be an physical motionless motion or can be interactive. Life is a hunger to life when not lived.

something like that. ah, you have some input.

I talk out of personal experience. I suppose life must be a uninterrupted motion. A constant.

Life is a everything (spelling?) in the unvariating context of it.

Posts say much about the position one has.. in life.


Life is action, living is going upwards. I don't know what life is.

reply to post by etherical waterwave


When one is at a point of not knowing what life is, one will start to act.

Life can be lots of things so it seems.

reply to post by etherical waterwave


Life is useless to live when there is no progress. Life can be progressive. Life expands. Life has a purpose not known to man. The purpose is known when one feels great. The purpose can only be felt, then again it can be known. Do we sometimes forget what life is? Forgetting life can lead to boredom as it can lead to pleasure.. and pleasure.

It is not to think about what life is untill you live.

reply to post by etherical waterwave


From the essay, quoting Schrodinger's paper "What is Life? the concept of negative entropy, or negentropy, as the defining characteristic of life. Contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which asserts that the general tendency in our universe is for order to decay into disorder – entropy – the tendency of life, indeed the very defining characteristic of life, is the opposite. Schrödinger defines life by its ability to create order out of disorder, to defy the trends that inanimate matter must otherwise inexorably follow."

Entropy is order decaying into disorder.

Life is negentropy - the ability to create order from disorder.

Interesting, don't you think?

disorder can be fun

All is life... we are all a part of the Oneness. We are all star dust. We are all made from the same materials.



1
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
...

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

4
The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

11
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

- Tao Te Ching

This whole reality is life. You are life, the Sun is the source of, and is also life, the planets, gasses etc are all life.

I think life is an eternal evolutionary process drven by the will to perfection and loving mutuality, in oder to enjoy varied experience and impression in a self forgetting that is always in the process of rediscovering it's own true nature, for fun, for something to do. Therefore life is, by it's own nature, creative, playful, and good humored, and so it and we then are a great work in progress and in process, moving towards some unfathomablly magnificent and immensely beautiful expression of an infinite wonder, making itself continually and forever available for mutual exploration and new discovery and therefore, rediscovery. In this way life isn't unlike the prodigal son, who although once lost, once dead, is found and made alive again in eternal resurrection and new life. Life therefore is filled as life meeting life, in a trascendance of death, or what is not, with the Good Nws - it is it's own Gospel to our senses, if we would but look again, see again, hear again, and at once, yet again, but believe.

"Have you not heard, have you not been told, since before the very foundations of the Earth?!"
~ John the Baptist

reply to post by Topato


wisdom is so simple to explain.

Does one stop living when one uses the computer?

Life is nothing more than awareness of self as it pertains to being human. We are just lucky that events unfolded in the universe to create us and our ability to be self aware. We get a small tiny lil bit of time of awareness then we die and are abosorbed back into the universe. There is no point to it all it just is. What is the point of a grain of sand? It is the same as the point of being human. We just exist for a short time then gone. Everything else we think do or feel is our own creation in our minds and nothing more.

I only hope the universe has conspired to create other aware inteligences that are smart enough to get out and explore and learn to extend their tiny little existences beyond what nature has proivided.

Life was what you experienced before you started to wonder what life is.

reply to post by etherical waterwave


I don't think one can ever stop living. Computers are extensions of the human mind. We are all consciousness and extensions of it. If we truly have souls and there is some sort of afterlife, then we simply can't die, only change states.

Originally posted by Xeven
We are just lucky that events unfolded in the universe to create us and our ability to be self aware.

Sometimes I wonder, are we lucky or quite the opposite? Wouldn't it be so much easier, so much simpler to be an insect or a cat? Not much thought, except food, sex, sleep. Yet still existence. I bet it's not a bad life.

As humans, we over think absolutely everything.

It's to always experience life so one never starts to wonder what life is. Those wondering what is life are locked outside of life but living. Living but not experiencing life. They should get involved in life. They can't seem to make life their way.
All people should get involved in life. The start is to think positive when it necessary for them to think positive. One can have bad thoughts about things but when they truly are bad things they think about they aren't having bad thoughts, you see?
Thinking positive can unlock the heart.

E.W.

reply to post by soficrow


Life is a feeling of wellbeing.

I don't think we are allowed to make people awake.

from wiki

Life (cf. biota) is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes (i. e., living organisms) from those that do not,[1][2] either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate.[3][4] Biology is the science concerned with the study of life.

Living organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations. More complex living organisms can communicate through various means.[1][5] A diverse array of living organisms (life forms) can be found in the biosphere on Earth, and the properties common to these organisms—plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria—are a carbon- and water-based cellular form with complex organization and heritable genetic information.

edit: oops

Awesome thread!!

We are but the universe waking up and becoming aware of itself, the consciousness of the universe looking out, or in, and recognizing that we are all the same. We are nothing but star dust harvesting star light in order to live.

Life is a complicated subject and has made or makes some of the best minds of the human race cringe under the concept of it.

If you take that we are all star dust, created from a supernova, which is true, then the consciousness that let's us function originally comes from there, so in essence everything is life. Over time those rocks in your back yard will break down into soil, which will be absorbed as nutrients into plants, and ingested become part of you, so you are the plant.

While the human race has a very small snapshot of the universe as a whole, and tend to think that we are superior to everything else, I blame religion for that, the majority of people have yet to grasp that everything, and I do mean everything is one.

Again, awesome subject.

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


7

The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.


29

Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.


- Tao Te Ching (#7 and #29)