Defining Life: Synthesis and Conclusions

Abstract

The first part of the paper offers philosophical landmarks on the general issue of defining life. Section 1 defends that the recognition of "life" has always been and remains primarily an intuitive process, for the scientist as for the layperson. However we should not expect, then, to be able to draw a definition from this original experience, because our cognitive apparatus has not been primarily designed for this. Section 2 is about definitions in general. Two kinds of definition should be carefully distinguished: lexical definitions (based upon current uses of a word), and stipulative or legislative definitions, which deliberately assign a meaning to a word, for the purpose of clarifying scientific or philosophical arguments. The present volume provides examples of these two kinds of definitions. Section 3 examines three traditional philosophical definitions of life, all of which have been elaborated prior to the emergence of biology as a specific scientific discipline: life as animation (Aristotle), life as mechanism, and life as organization (Kant). All three concepts constitute a common heritage that structures in depth a good deal of our cultural intuitions and vocabulary any time we try to think about "life". The present volume offers examples of these three concepts in contemporary scientific discourse. The second part of the paper proposes a synthesis of the major debates developed in this volume. Three major questions have been discussed. A first issue (Section 4) is whether we should define life or not, and why. Most authors are skeptical about the possibility of defining life in a strong way, although all admit that criteria are useful in contexts such as exobiology, artificial life and the origins of life. Section 5 examines the possible kinds of definitions of life presented in the volume. Those authors who have explicitly defended that a definition of life is needed, can be classified into two categories. The first category (or standard view) refers to two conditions: individual self-maintenance and the open-ended evolution of a collection of similar entities. The other category refuse to include reproduction and evolution, and take a sort of psychic view of the living. Section 6 examines the relationship between the question of the definition of life and that of the origins of life. There is a close parallel between the general conceptions of the origins of life and the definitions of life.