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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: "What is Life?"
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Date: Mon, 30 Jan 95 22:43:10 GMT
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In <D38ACu.t7F@ns1.nodak.edu> altenbur@plains.NoDak.edu (Karl Altenburg) writes:
>Brian Holtz (holtz@netcord.Eng.Sun.COM) wrote:

>: Life is the ability to reproduce and evolve.  
>: [...]
>: A more involved
>: definition is required if we want to be able to tell living things
>: from inanimate, unborn, and dead things.  An entity can be
>: considered alive if and only if it 1) is of a kind that usually can
>: reproduce and evolve, and 2) has achieved independence of a parent's
>: direct, continuous, and non-fungible assistance to its environmental
>: interactions, and 3) is able to reproduce or interact with its
>: environment.

>: Thus:

>: - Tornados and fires aren't alive.
>Why isn't a fire alive?  It reproduces, evolves into different types of
>fires as resources are found or used up, and it does depend on its
>parent to help it once it has spread.

>: - Ideas aren't alive.
>Very hard to disprove.  Many of the ideas (memes) that are distributed around
>the world have been reproduced, have evolved, are existing in the absence
>of their original parent.

>: - Viruses are alive.
>If ideas aren't alive why is a virus alive?

>: - Tierrans are alive.
>This really seems to be a bias.

> [...]
>I guess I would place a strong emphesis on the organization of a system.

I would agree with that.  In some ways I agree more with the general thrust
of the autopoiesis / autonomous systems AL camp (more European) than the 
reproduction/evolution camps (moer SFI/American).  To them it is the 
functional relations within the structure that embody the characteristics
of life  -- to them, something that lived forever and never reproduced
could still be alive if it had the correct structural properties.  This
makes more sense to me.

Besides, all of this emphasis on reproduction seems awfully heterosexist
to me.  :-) :-)

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

