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.
2.5. References
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Catling, D. (2013). Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cleland, C., Chyba, C. (2010). Does “life” have a definition?. In The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science, Bedau, M., Cleland, C. (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 326–339.
Crick, F. (1990). What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. Penguin Books, London.
Dawkins, R. (2010). Universal Darwinism. In The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science, Bedau, M., Cleland, C. (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 360–373.
Dennett, D.C. (1996). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. Touchstone, New York.
Eldredge, N., Gould, S.J. (1972). Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In Models in Paleobiology, Dodd, J.R., Schopf, T.J.M. (eds). Freeman, San Francisco, 82–115.
Joyce, G.F., Deamer, D.W., Fleischaker, G.R. (eds) (1994). Origins of Life. The Central Concepts. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston.
Lazcano, A. (2017a). A Skeptical Afterword. In What Is Life? On Earth and Beyond, Losch, A. (ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 311–313.
Lazcano, A. (2017b). Precellular Evolution and the Origin of Life: Some Notes on Reductionism, Complexity and Historical Contingency. In What Is Life? On Earth and Beyond, Losch, A. (ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 75–93.
Lazcano, A. (2017). The Emergence of Life: Some Notes on the Origin of Biological Information. In Life Sciences, Information Sciences, Gaudin, T. et al. (eds). ISTE Ltd, London, and Wiley, New York, 1–15.
Lennox, J.G. (1993). Darwin was a teleologist. Biology and Philosophy, 8, 409–421.
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Mayr, E. (1965). Cause and Effect in Biology. In Cause and Effect. The Hayden Colloquium on Scientific Method and Concept, Lerner, D. (ed.). Free Press, New York, 33–50.
Mayr, E. (1982). The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Belknap Press, Cambridge.
Morange, M. (2017). Science and Philosophy Faced with the Question of Life in the Twenty-first Century. In What Is Life? On Earth and Beyond, Losch, A. (ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 97–110.
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Sagan, C. (2010). Definitions of Life. In The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science, Bedau, M., Cleland, C. (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 303–306.
Schrödinger, E. (1992). What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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