There are six elements essential for life: Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Of course, other elements play roles, some not insignificant, but take away those fundamental six, and life would have to be something other than what it now is. Yet, as significant as those six elements are, they can’t by themselves be used to define life.
You might point out that life suggests some kind of activity, the biochemical processes, for example. You might say, “self-reproducibility,” if you knew only the cnidarian Hydra while ignoring your own life-form. But there’s another end to a sliding scale of definitions of life, one that entails a more complex answer, as I implied above, an answer more comprehensive than one based on those six elements.
Do you remember why Darwin, after years of keeping his research largely to himself, rushed his famous work into print in 1859? Charlie’s motivation stemmed in large part from the work of Alfred R. Wallace, literally a co-discover of evolutionary principles and a guy about to publish his own version of evolution. Anyway, long after Darwin had been given most of the credit for understanding a mechanism for speciation, Wallace wrote a work entitled Man’s Place in the Universe It is an ambitious work subtitled “A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds.” Chapter X of his book addresses the definitions of life:
Physiologists and philosophers have made many attempts to define 'life,' but in most cases in aiming at absolute generality they have been vague and uninstructive. Thus De Blainville defined it as 'The twofold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous'; while Herbert Spencer's latest definition was 'Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.' But neither of these is sufficiently precise, explanatory, or distinctive, and they might almost be applied to the changes occurring in a sun or planet, or to the elevation and gradual formation of a continent. One of the oldest definitions, that of Aristotle, seems to come nearer the mark: 'Life is the assemblage of the operations of nutrition, growth, and destruction.' But these definitions of 'life' are unsatisfactory, because they apply to an abstract idea rather than to the actual living organism. The marvel and mystery of life, as we know it, resides in the body which manifests it, and this living body the definitions ignore (192).*
Wallace wrote his book a half century before Watson and Crick discovered the details of DNA. Nevertheless, he knew that the problem of defining life might be dependent upon our understanding of how millions upon millions of molecules function and that constant change was a characteristic of life. For Wallace and the people of his time, a seemingly unfathomable changing complexity underlies life. Yet, he did recognize at least one fundamental property as he quotes from Professor F. J. Allen’s What Is Life?: “’The chief physical function of living matter seems to consist in absorbing energy, storing it in a higher potential state, and afterwards partially expending it in the kinetic or active form.’” And he also quotes from Professor Burdon Sanderson, “’The most distinctive peculiarity of living matter as compared with non-living is, that it is ever changing while ever the same.’”
HOCNSP is matter than underlies process. Life isn’t just matter. It’s stuff in an energy exchange. Now, you might argue that all matter undergoes change, and you would be correct. However, chemical reactions have products that are recognizably different from their pre-reaction components: Sodium plus chlorine equals salt. Crystals of salt are patterns reproduced ad infinitum, given sufficient time, supply of constituents, chemical energy, and space to form, and they are inorganic, and, therefore, not life. Life manages to change in an identical context of time, supply, energy, and space, but somehow remains the same: I recognize you in your childhood pictures, and you know yourself as a continuum.
And you, that collection of HOCNSP (and other elements) in action, are a prime example of life and the difficulty we all have in defining it to everyone’s satisfaction: Life seems simple by way of reduction, but incredibly complex in its many components that actively change while somehow seeming the same. You’re one of those living things. Help us out here. How do you define living? We all want to know.
Do you delve into the untold details of metabolism in your definition? Into the quantum effects in electric impulses dancing across synapses in neurotransmitters? Come on, now. You’re a sophisticated twenty-first century living combination of HOCNSP imbued with consciousness (whatever that is). You’ve “been alive” for some time now. So, how do you define what you are?
I asked one of my children that question when he was only three or four. That seems like an onerous task since I am still waiting for your definitive reply. “Name something that is alive,” I said. He said, “A car.” I was perplexed. A car? How could a car be alive? When I asked him, he said simply, “It moves.”
Of course, I didn’t press a child about life-forms that don’t move, such as trees. Nor did I delve into “growth,” or “decay,” or even “death” (that wouldn’t be good parenting). When I thought about his answer, I realized there’s something to the “auto” (self) mobile idea that reduces life to an essential characteristic. Movement implies an energy expenditure. Of course, a three-year-old probably can’t see how an expenditure of energy is also part of a tree’s existence. But, now that I think of the car—not that I’m thinking of self-driving vehicles—I’m pretty sure my son was onto something.
We have a cultural tendency to value great expenditures of energy characteristic of those with prodigious outputs of creativity or work. Look at prolific authors, for example. Or look at those whose work ethic carried them to the pinnacles of their trade or profession. We realize that some among us define their lives by accomplishments almost too numerous to mention. We say, “There’s someone living life to the fullest.” And we often think of someone in a coma as being in a vegetative state. We know the comatose to be alive, just as we know the sleeping are alive. But we do associate energy expenditure with “living.”
So, I return to the question. How do you define life? Do you generalize? Do you delve into complex biochemistry centered on HOCNSP? Do you define life in such a way that your definition includes Hydra and human?
One more question: Will your definition include a car?
Wallace, Alfred R. Man’s Place in the Universe, London. Chapman and Hall, Limited, 1904. Available online through the Gutenberg Project at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39928/39928-h/39928-h.htm#Page_191
You might point out that life suggests some kind of activity, the biochemical processes, for example. You might say, “self-reproducibility,” if you knew only the cnidarian Hydra while ignoring your own life-form. But there’s another end to a sliding scale of definitions of life, one that entails a more complex answer, as I implied above, an answer more comprehensive than one based on those six elements.
Do you remember why Darwin, after years of keeping his research largely to himself, rushed his famous work into print in 1859? Charlie’s motivation stemmed in large part from the work of Alfred R. Wallace, literally a co-discover of evolutionary principles and a guy about to publish his own version of evolution. Anyway, long after Darwin had been given most of the credit for understanding a mechanism for speciation, Wallace wrote a work entitled Man’s Place in the Universe It is an ambitious work subtitled “A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds.” Chapter X of his book addresses the definitions of life:
Physiologists and philosophers have made many attempts to define 'life,' but in most cases in aiming at absolute generality they have been vague and uninstructive. Thus De Blainville defined it as 'The twofold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous'; while Herbert Spencer's latest definition was 'Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.' But neither of these is sufficiently precise, explanatory, or distinctive, and they might almost be applied to the changes occurring in a sun or planet, or to the elevation and gradual formation of a continent. One of the oldest definitions, that of Aristotle, seems to come nearer the mark: 'Life is the assemblage of the operations of nutrition, growth, and destruction.' But these definitions of 'life' are unsatisfactory, because they apply to an abstract idea rather than to the actual living organism. The marvel and mystery of life, as we know it, resides in the body which manifests it, and this living body the definitions ignore (192).*
Wallace wrote his book a half century before Watson and Crick discovered the details of DNA. Nevertheless, he knew that the problem of defining life might be dependent upon our understanding of how millions upon millions of molecules function and that constant change was a characteristic of life. For Wallace and the people of his time, a seemingly unfathomable changing complexity underlies life. Yet, he did recognize at least one fundamental property as he quotes from Professor F. J. Allen’s What Is Life?: “’The chief physical function of living matter seems to consist in absorbing energy, storing it in a higher potential state, and afterwards partially expending it in the kinetic or active form.’” And he also quotes from Professor Burdon Sanderson, “’The most distinctive peculiarity of living matter as compared with non-living is, that it is ever changing while ever the same.’”
HOCNSP is matter than underlies process. Life isn’t just matter. It’s stuff in an energy exchange. Now, you might argue that all matter undergoes change, and you would be correct. However, chemical reactions have products that are recognizably different from their pre-reaction components: Sodium plus chlorine equals salt. Crystals of salt are patterns reproduced ad infinitum, given sufficient time, supply of constituents, chemical energy, and space to form, and they are inorganic, and, therefore, not life. Life manages to change in an identical context of time, supply, energy, and space, but somehow remains the same: I recognize you in your childhood pictures, and you know yourself as a continuum.
And you, that collection of HOCNSP (and other elements) in action, are a prime example of life and the difficulty we all have in defining it to everyone’s satisfaction: Life seems simple by way of reduction, but incredibly complex in its many components that actively change while somehow seeming the same. You’re one of those living things. Help us out here. How do you define living? We all want to know.
Do you delve into the untold details of metabolism in your definition? Into the quantum effects in electric impulses dancing across synapses in neurotransmitters? Come on, now. You’re a sophisticated twenty-first century living combination of HOCNSP imbued with consciousness (whatever that is). You’ve “been alive” for some time now. So, how do you define what you are?
I asked one of my children that question when he was only three or four. That seems like an onerous task since I am still waiting for your definitive reply. “Name something that is alive,” I said. He said, “A car.” I was perplexed. A car? How could a car be alive? When I asked him, he said simply, “It moves.”
Of course, I didn’t press a child about life-forms that don’t move, such as trees. Nor did I delve into “growth,” or “decay,” or even “death” (that wouldn’t be good parenting). When I thought about his answer, I realized there’s something to the “auto” (self) mobile idea that reduces life to an essential characteristic. Movement implies an energy expenditure. Of course, a three-year-old probably can’t see how an expenditure of energy is also part of a tree’s existence. But, now that I think of the car—not that I’m thinking of self-driving vehicles—I’m pretty sure my son was onto something.
We have a cultural tendency to value great expenditures of energy characteristic of those with prodigious outputs of creativity or work. Look at prolific authors, for example. Or look at those whose work ethic carried them to the pinnacles of their trade or profession. We realize that some among us define their lives by accomplishments almost too numerous to mention. We say, “There’s someone living life to the fullest.” And we often think of someone in a coma as being in a vegetative state. We know the comatose to be alive, just as we know the sleeping are alive. But we do associate energy expenditure with “living.”
So, I return to the question. How do you define life? Do you generalize? Do you delve into complex biochemistry centered on HOCNSP? Do you define life in such a way that your definition includes Hydra and human?
One more question: Will your definition include a car?
Wallace, Alfred R. Man’s Place in the Universe, London. Chapman and Hall, Limited, 1904. Available online through the Gutenberg Project at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39928/39928-h/39928-h.htm#Page_191
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