Abstract
What is life? Multiple definitions have been proposed to answer this question, but unfortunately, none of them has reached the consensus of the scientific community. Here, the strategy used to define what life is was based on first establishing which characteristics are common to all living systems (organic nature, entropy-producing system, self-organizing, reworkable pre-program, capacity to interact and adapt, reproduction and evolution) and from them constructing the definition taking into account that reproduction and evolution are not essential for life. On this basis, life is defined as an interactive process occurring in entropy-producing, adaptive, and informative (organic) systems. An unforeseen consequence of the inseparable duality between the system (living being) and the process (life) is the interchangeability of the elements of the definition to obtain other equally valid alternatives. In addition, in the light of this definition, cases of temporarily lifeless living systems (viruses, dormant seeds, and ultracold cells) are analyzed, as well as the status of artificial life entities and the hypothetical nature of extraterrestrial life. All living systems are perishable because the passage of time leads to increasing entropy. Life must create order by continuously producing disorder and exporting it to the environment and so we move and stay in the phase transition between order and chaos, far from equilibrium, thanks to the input of energy from the outside. However, the passage of time eventually leads us to an end in which life disappears and entropy increases.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aguilar W, Santamaría-Bonfil G, Froese T, Gershenson C (2014) The past, present, and future of artificial life. Front Robot AI 1:8
Anderson PW (1972) More is different. Science 177:393–396
Artime O, De Domenico M (2022) From the origin of life to pandemics: emergent phenomena in complex systems. Philos Trans Royal Soc A 380:20200410
Bateson P (2017) Adaptability and evolution. Interface. Focus 7:20160126
Becker A, Murialdo H, Gold M (1977) Studies on an in vitro system for the packaging and maturation of phage λ DNA. Virology 78:277–290
Beekman W, Jochemsen H (2023) Self-organization through semiosis. Biol Theory 18:90–100
Boden M (1999) Is metabolism necessary? Br J Philos Sci 50:231–248
Callahan MP, Smith KE, James Cleaves JH, Ruzickad J, Sterna JC, Glavina DP, House CH, Dworkin JP (2011) Carbonaceus meteorites contain a wide range of extraterrestrial nucleobases. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108:13995–13998
Camazine S, Deneubourg J-L, Franks NR, Sneyd J, Theraula G, Bonabeau E (2001) Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Cleland CE (2019) The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Cleland CE, Chyba CF (2002) Defining life. Orig Life Evol Biosph 32:387–393
Cockell CS (2016) The similarity of life across the universe. Mol Biol Cell 27:1553–1555
Crick F (1970) Central dogma of molecular biology. Nature 227:561–563
Fernau S, Braun M, Dabrock P (2020) What is (synthetic) life? basic concepts of life in synthetic biology. PLoS ONE 15:e0235808
French RE, Holmes EC (2020) An ecosystem perspective on virus evolution and emergence. Trends Microbiol 28:165–175
Garner KL (2021) Principles of synthetic biology. Essays Biochem 6:791–811
Gershenson C, Trianni V, Werfel J, Sayama H (2020) Self-organization and artificial life. Artif Life 26:391–408
Gilbert C, Cordaux R (2017) Viruses as vectors of horizontal transfer of genetic material in eukaryotes. Curr Opin Virol 25:16–22
Gómez-Márquez J (2020) What are the principles that govern life? Commun Integr Biol 13:97–107
Gómez-Márquez J (2021) What is life? Mol Biol Rep 48:6223–6230
Gómez-Márquez J (2023a) Lithbea, a new domain outside the tree of life. Global Philos 33:4
Gómez-Márquez J (2023b) A new definition and three categories for classifying ecosystems. Acad Biol 1:1–9
Jagers op Akkerhuis GAJM (2010) Towards a hierarchical definition of life, the organism, and death. Found Sci 15:245–262
Joyce GF, Deamer DW, Fleischaker G (1994) Origins of Life: The Central Concepts. Jones and Bartlett, Boston
Karsenti E (2008) Self-organization in cell biology: a brief history. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 9:255–262
Kauffman SA (1993) The origins of order: self-organization and selection in evolution. Oxford University Press, New York
Keller MA, Zylstra A, Castro C, Turchyn AV, Griffin JL, Ralser M (2016) Conditional iron and pH-dependent activity of a non-enzymatic glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway. Sci Adv 2(1):e1501235
Kirschner MW (2005) The meaning of systems biology. Cell 121:503–504
Kisak PF (2015) Entropy & Negentropy. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Klinge S, Woolford JL (2019) Ribosome assembly coming into focus. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 20:116–131
Kondepudi DK, De Bari B, Dixon JA (2020) Dissipative structures, organisms and evolution. Entropy 22(11):1305
Kong X, Gao P, Wang J, Fang Y, Hwang KC (2023) Advances of medical nanorobots for future cancer treatments. J Hematol Oncol 16:74
Koonin E (2012) Defining life: an exercise in semantics or a route to biological insights? J Biomol Struct Dyn 29:603–605
Koshland DE Jr (2002) The seven pillars of life. Science 295:2215–2216
Kriegman S, Blackiston D, Levin M, Bongard J (2020) A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 117:1853–1859
Luisi PL (1998) About various definitions of life. Orig Life Evol Biosph 28:613–622
Machery E (2012) Why I stopped worrying about the definition of life …. and why you should not as well. Synthese 185:145–164
Macklem PT (2008) Emergent phenomena and the secrets of life. J Appl Physiol 104:1844–1846
Macklem PT, Seely A (2010) Towards a definition of life. Perspect Biol Med 53:330–340
Mahmoudabadi G, Milo R, Phillips R (2017) Energetic cost of building a virus. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114:E4324–E4333
Mariscal C (2021) Life. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University
Mariscal C, Doolittle WF (2020) Life and life only: a radical alternative to life definitionism. Synthese 197:2975–2989
Martyushev LM, Seleznev VD (2006) Maximum entropy production principle in physics, chemistry and biology. Phys Rep 426:1–45
McKay CP (1991) Urey prize lecture: planetary evolution and the origin of life. Icarus 91:92–100
Muchowska K, Varma S, Moran J (2019) Synthesis and breakdown of universal metabolic precursors promoted by iron. Nature 569:104–107
Novikoff A (1945) The concept of integrative levels and biology. Science 101:209–215
O’Connor T (2021) Emergent properties. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University
O’Malley MA (2016) The ecological virus. Stud Hist Phil Biol Biomed Sci 59:71–79
Oba Y, Takano Y, Furukawa Y, Koga T, Glavin DP, Dworkin JP, Naraoka H (2022) Identifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites. Nat Commun 13:2008
Oba Y et al (2023) Uracil in the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu. Nat Commun 14:1292
Pályi G, Zucci C, Caglioti C (eds) (2002) Fundamentals of Life. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Popper K (1959) The logic of scientific discovery. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Poudel RC (2023) A unified science of matter, life and evolution. Phil Trans R Soc A 381:20220291
Price H (1996) Time’s arrow and archimedes’ point. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Prigogine I, Nicolis G (1967) On symmetry-breaking instabilities in dissipative systems. J Chem Phys 46:3542–3550
Prigogine I, Stengers I (1984) Order out of chaos. Bantam Books, New York
Que C-L, Kenyon CM, Olivenstein R, Macklem PT, Maksym GN (2001) Homeokinesis and short-term variability of human airway caliber. J Appl Physiol 91:1131–1141
Ruiz-Mirazo K, Peretó J, Moreno A (2004) A universal definition of life: autonomy and open-ended evolution. Orig Life Evol Biosph 34:323–346
Schrödinger E (1944) What is life? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Seely AJ (2020) Optimizing our patients’ entropy production as therapy? Hypotheses originating from the physics of physiology. Entropy 22:1095
Seely AJ, Macklem P (2012) Fractal variability: an emergent property of complex dissipative systems. Chaos 22:013108
Szostak J (2012) Attempts to define life do not help to understand the origin of life. J Biomol Struct Dyn 29:599–600
Trifonov EN (2011) Vocabulary of definitions of life suggests a definition. J Biomol Struct Dyn 29:259–266
Tsokolov SA (2009) Why is the definition of life so elusive? Epistemological Considerations. Astrobiol 9:401–412
Turing AM (1950) Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind 59:433–460
Vitas M, Dobovišek A (2019) Towards a general definition of life. Orig Life Evol Biosph 49:77–88
Watts AW (unknown date) https://www.organism.earth/library/document/ecological-awareness
Wedlich-Söldner R, Betz T (2018) Self-organization: the fundament of cell biology. Philos Trans Royal Soc B 373:20170103
Wenger E (1988) Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Witzany G (2020) What is Life? Front Astron Space Sci 7:7
Zhuravlev YN, Avetisov VA (2006) The definition of life in the context of its origin. Biogeosci 3:281–291
Zimmer C (2021) Life’s Edge. Dutton, New York
Acknowledgements
I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Andrew J.E. Seely for his comments during the revision process, which have been a source of inspiration and insight. I also thank Dr. Kathryn Garner and Dr. Elena Tasinato for their critical reading of the manuscript; their comments helped me greatly to improve it. I would also like to thank Dr. González Caamaño (USC) and Dr. P. Bella (UAM) for their helpful discussions on the nature of life. This work is dedicated to my dear mother Cristina and my beloved granddaughter Daniela because they both represent the end and the beginning of life.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical approval
Not applicable.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no competing interests.
Additional information
Communicated by Matthias Waltert
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
“Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.” (K. Popper 1959).
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Gómez-Márquez, J. Reflections upon a new definition of life. Sci Nat 110, 53 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-023-01882-5
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-023-01882-5