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Author Topic:   Is there a border dividing life from non-life?
Mammuthus
Member (Idle past 6474 days)
Posts: 3085
From: Munich, Germany
Joined: 08-09-2002


Message 81 of 132 (136778)
08-25-2004 12:11 PM
Reply to: Message 80 by NosyNed
08-25-2004 11:44 AM


Re: an important disagreement
While I agree that a difficult aspect of defining life is that it is an emergent property, I don't think one can draw a line. It may be more of a gradation much like the difficulty involved in defining sub-generic systematic classifcations such as species or sub-species. Are self replicating RNA molecules "alive"? They require substrates, can reproduce? How about viruses? They share even more in common with organisms many consider living but are often considered to be non-life. I doubt a fine line can be established. Probably the simplest self replicating molecules during the process of abiogenesis would not be currently recognized as "life".

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