How “Recipes” in the Cells of Living Organisms Were Found and Can Be Rewritten

Abstract

There is such a plethora of questions concerning life that, of course, the subset I shall consider in this chapter must be relatively small. In particular, I shall not consider Darwin’s theory of evolution because it has not contributed to the progress of technology, i.e., there is no technological product or process whose designers or implementers have used any findings from the theory of evolution. In his book “On the Living” [CH 2] the biochemist Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002) wrote that it is impossible to give a satisfying and final definition for the term “life.” He was convinced that whatever definition is given, some facts will exist which do not fit it. But this didn’t bother him, since he didn’t see any need for such a definition. However, he got upset whenever someone behaved as if he knew exactly what life is. In Chargaff’s texts, I also found the statement that “life can never be the subject of any research, because scientists can look only at this or that living object.” Since I share his opinion, the following paragraphs will not be about life, but only about the living.