What is life?
2021
Gómez-Márquez, Jaime
BACKGROUND: Many traditional biological concepts continue to be debated by biologists, scientists and philosophers of science. The specific objective of this brief reflection is to offer an alternative vision to the definition of life taking as a starting point the traits common to all living beings. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Thus, I define life as a process that takes place in highly organized organic structures and is characterized by being preprogrammed, interactive, adaptative and evolutionary. If life is the process, living beings are the system in which this process takes place. I also wonder whether viruses can be considered living things or not. Taking as a starting point my definition of life and, of course, on what others have thought about it, I am in favor of considering viruses as living beings. I base this conclusion on the fact that viruses satisfy all the vital characteristics common to all living things and on the role they have played in the evolution of species. Finally, I argue that if there were life elsewhere in the universe, it would be very similar to what we know on this planet because the laws of physics and the composition of matter are universal and because of the principle of the inexorability of life.
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