Definition of life

[velias]

As the title says, i'm searching an answer for some of my gratest doubts: what is life? What is the difference between something who we define "alive" and something who isn't? All I can see are chemical reactions.

[Deleted]

Life it's the materialisation of the energyes from all universe wich are everywhere arround us,we were created from energy.
Everytime when I did bad things,bad things happened to me in return,when I did good,good things happened to me.
Energies are infinite,and they are created by every little being from every corner of the universe.

[velias]

I doubt is about energy. We NEED energy to survive, but it's not something that made us. We're basically an accumulation of informations, nothing more, born from chemical reactions.

[Deleted]

This is just the material world,inside us is a soul,that soul is our energy,after we die,we become free from this prison called body,and we become one with the universe.
Energy created us,energy controls everything,it's the game of the universe.

[velias]

I don't believe in those things... i'm studying life, but i can't nderstand WHY we live.

[Deleted]

The life here is a test,when someone die the person will be a negative energy from the universe or a positive energy,depends on what kind of energy the person obtained when he was here in the material world.
It's Karma,if a person is  bad  in this life,if he will be borned again his life will be very hard because of the negative energy from his past life,no one can be a bad person and to just die and not pay,the person will pay in another life.

[Almonaster]

Any system which can replicate, and which reduces entropy relative to its environment.

[velias]

Dec 5, 2014 11:18:19 GMT -5 Almonaster said:

Any system which can replicate, and which reduces entropy relative to its environment.

To understand the meaning of life, i'm actually studying hte universe. I discovered that one of the theories on the Universe is the "bubble universe", so the universe can replicate in many multiverse, reducing naturally it's entropy.
Almonaster, I gladly see that you already know the biological definition, so what do you think? I'm really curious and I think we're related to the universe in other ways.

[Almonaster]

Ah. "What is the meaning of life?" is a very different question from "What is life?"

I don't think that life necessarily has a meaning, it just is.

We are a part of the Universe. Neither the lords of creation, nor insignificant dust. Our great gift is the ability to look around and marvel.

Given what you're thinking about, you may find this site interesting... waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html

[velias]

The meaning will help me to understand if every form of life is "needed": I don't think humans are the final product, i just want to know. To know the chemical reaction that generated life... and if this is something needed in the universe, like an "information" for black and white holes to reproduce another universe, or maybe it's just the universe that generates around the "life information/reaction". In fact another theory says that probably only life-capable universes are generated fully.

[Deleted]

Life is a wonderful random occurrence, rare but, i believe, plentiful in the whole universe.
We live because we are random.
There is no meaning of life, we are just random, yet what we do in life is linear because...
We are sentient, because randomness made us so.
Life depends on the ability to adapt,
All existing life can adapt, but that is a random trait. Life that cannot adapt ceases to exist.
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Chemical reactions may not indicate life, however, life requires chemical reactions. Life ceases to exist when chemical reactions stop.
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A soul is pure energy.
The existence of a soul might not yet be proven, but it seems to exist.
Like a key and a lock, so might be a soul and a body. When a body ceases to function, the soul is released until it finds a new body. Without a soul, a body can't function, and a newborn ceases to exist.
A soul provides sentience to organic life forms.
Plants and microorganisms are not sentient because they have no soul.
Yet...
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Not every life form is needed.
Because existing life is random and can adapt, some might exist unchallenged, yet be slower to adapt, because they might not need to.
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All the rules of the Universe are beyond our comprehension. We are sentient, but we still need to evolve to understand them.
We can only understand the rules of the universe...
When we become one with it...
Again

[Deleted]

In the physical sense of recording and redefining existence, life might be considered as a series of chaotic accidents, with different arrangements of molecules acting and reacting on various ways.
On a deeper and more philosophical level, life takes a rather extraordinary amount of energy, and uses it so increase the entropy burden of the universe. The continuous increase in disturbance and chaos is due to this biochemical effect called life.

[velias]

Oh, but i'm not searching the definition of an individual life! But the chemical process or whatever it is that we define as "life". Is it an accident? Just a singularity?

[Deleted]

That's kind of hard to suggest. In the scientific perspective, life is known only as a separate science, rather than as a collective development in any one physical field . I assumed you meant the philosophical outlook to life. Never mind.
What we do know abt life is that it is versatile and can not be studied to a full extent till the entity studying it can escape and externally observe the phenomenon.

[Ertaga]

If I may provide my own opinion, life is simply the state of living, and the ability to live and traverse the experience of life as a whole. There is no, in my opinion, direct purpose as to why we live. We were not necessarily born to multiply and become many, but this is how we come to be. This is especially true in humans, as the opportunity is everlasting always available for us to go forth in pursuit of anything we so seek. Granted, the journey is much easier in some parts of the world than in others, but we are hardly at all given the gift of life for one specific, other-worldly decided purpose; we define this for ourselves as we go along.

[Ertaga]

If you seek a more scientific explanation of life, I am not best suited to provide. Life in a scientific sense is simply what it is. There's no way to truly describe it. You could consider it a series of colossal accidents and reactions, but why observe it as being something that sounds so horrendous? Life is the most beautiful thing that we as organisms can comprehend; for life is the epicenter and literal spawn of all things otherwise that we come to know as we, well, live.

[fmlyhm]

Feb 18, 2015 15:39:35 GMT -5 velias said:

Oh, but i'm not searching the definition of an individual life! But the chemical process or whatever it is that we define as "life". Is it an accident? Just a singularity?

Yes. One random collection of molecules starting to self-replicate is all it takes - evolution carries it from there.

[The Confederacy of Halimia]

One of the problems presented in attempting to define life is the fact that evolution and the creation of life have no boundaries or lines in the sand to point at and say "That's it, that's life!", because even if there was, you could still look *inside* the line.

It's similar to the argument brought up in abortion arguments. When does a sperm cell and an egg cell combined count as a human being?

The thing is, there is a portion of scientific theorists that suggest (the biblicans will love this) that life came from clay, and it's persistent oxidation. Making the assumption this is true, at what point does the clay become defined as life?

Have I grasped the question you were trying to ask velias, ?

[Candlewhisper]

I'd say defining life is a question of semantics rather than philosophy, though in how we choose to answer the question we reveal a lot about our philosophy and outlook of the universe. I'd note even that its not just "if you ask a scientist" or "if you ask a theist", its more, if you ask this group of scientists, or that group of theists.

To my point of view, as an atheist, life is "a word used by people to describe a given group of phenomena within the universe, and the extrapolations about future similar phenomena based on observations of the patterns of the recognised group."

In other words, I believe the word can be fluidly defined according to the context you are using the word in, the group of people using the word, and where we are in the world and in history. To me, the question and the activities that the question leads you to are far more important than the answer itself.

Regarding that dividing line between something that is alive and is dead, I'd observe that aliveness isn't a quality of a quark, or an atom, or a molecule (yep, even DNA), but rather a broader emergent phenomenon that is a macroscopically visible pattern born of more complex factors. I'd say the same thing about thought, about identity, and so on. Emergence is one of my favourite topics, and it pretty much defines how I view the question "what is life?"

Life is this thing, you know, that is that thing we call life. What makes up life? Lots of things.

[KoneBaung]

Life is a measure of time. Without Time, we do not exist. With time, we live.

[Candlewhisper]

Not necessarily. Time would exist with or without life: its just another direction/dimension, after all.

If we're talking about the perception of time as a linear series of events, then that's a product of mind. What is Mind? Well, thats another topic again!

[Zeustralia]

Nov 29, 2014 19:00:24 GMT -5 velias said:

As the title says, i'm searching an answer for some of my gratest doubts: what is life? What is the difference between something who we define "alive" and something who isn't? All I can see are chemical reactions.

Life is [defined by its ability its capacity] for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=what%20is%20life

I find this a pretty straight forward definition and without many sticking points. 

[Candlewhisper]

So memes are alive, then? :)

Ideas grow, reproduce, have functional activity, change continuously and then die.

So do weather patterns, religions, societies and nuclear reactions.

In other words, the definition you give describes things that life does, but isn't exclusive to life.