Читать книгу The Explosion of Life Forms - Группа авторов - Страница 25

A definition of life by a set of properties is the best we currently have. We used the example of water, to make clear that this may present a preliminary status only to describe life. Maybe we have to extend our informational perspective on life beyond genetic informationalism to understand the full phenomenon. This challenge may be more complex than initially imagined. Consider this: H₂O may be water, but not that what we mean when we ask for water. Pure H₂O – distilled water – would actually kill us; there is a lot more in the actual mix of “water” which makes it usable for us. Likewise, even if we identify the special relation of components which distinguishes living phenomena even before the emergence of RNA and DNA, we might think of something different when using “life” in our everyday language.

Maybe several difficulties would be resolved if we invent a new language specifically for living phenomena (an idea of A. Lazcano, private conversation) – like physics has mathematics as a language of its own. Even then, the complex phenomenon we as humans refer to by attributing something to be “alive” may be something else than life in purely scientific terms or language.

So, what is the nature of life? As long as we lack the appropriate words to answer it concisely, we must continue to use a conglomerate of words to describe what we mean by “life”. Organisms have a combination of characteristics that are never found together in inanimate objects (Morange 2017, p. 107). In these regards all the definitions listed under section (2) still have their moment of truth; to some degree, we still are at the stage of a physiological approach. On the other hand, we already know metabolism is a necessary ingredient of any life as an open system. And finally, and most important, an informational or biochemical pattern (like RNA or DNA) is of the essence to allow replication and genetic development with it.