The Meaning of "Life."


	The Meaning of "Life."

muhus

9-8-2007 6:57 PM

293 views

tags:

development, thoughts, ideas, life, meaning, sense

muhus says:

The continuing search for the definition of "life," where we'll find it and how we'll choose definitions to give meaning to it

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/7ed9b23f-248e-4bb7-a9ec-f2f096c38304/F0AB06E5-AE4B-4305-9EFB-ECC3C3E949C3/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.google.com/ig" href="http://www.google.com/ig" style="font-size: 11px;">www.google.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.google.com/ig"><P>John Wilkins at <A href="http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/09/what_is_life_again.php" target="_blank">Evolving Thoughts</A> has a great post about the development of the modern definition of “Life” (which, one strongly suspects, is by no means fully developed).  Once we break free of the most parochial definitions involving carbon-based chemistry, we’re left with the general ideas that life is something complex, something that processes information, something that can evolve, something that takes advantage of local entropy gradients to make records and build structures.  (Probably <A href="http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/05/22/the-universe-is-structured-like-a-language/" target="_blank">quantum computation</A> does not play a crucial role, but who knows?)  One of the first people to think in these physical terms was none other than Erwin Schrödinger, who was mostly famous for other things, but did write an influential little book called <EM><A href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Life-Matter-Autobiographical-Sketches/dp/0521427088/" target="_blank">What Is Life?</A></EM> that explored the connections between life and thermodynamics.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.google.com/ig"><DIV class="header">
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<A target="_blank" class="item-title-link" href="http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/09/08/the-meaning-of-life/"><INS class="title">The Meaning of “Life”</INS></A>
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<SPAN class="author-parent"><INS class="author">Sean</INS> </SPAN><SPAN class="date-parent"><INS class="date">12:21 PM</INS></SPAN>
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