The Definition Of Life

An age-old question is "What exactly is life?" I mean, what differentiates living things from inanimate matter? Why are a human being, a dog and, a tree alive but a rock is not alive?

We could say that living things are born, they take in food of some type for energy, they reproduce and at some point they die. But a virus also reproduces, although it is not generally considered as alive. Flames and stars also manifest all of the above characteristics of life, even though we do not categorize them as such.

I would like to offer a really practical definition of life. In a previous posting on this blog, "The Patterns Of Life", I pointed out that it is the RIDGE pattern which differentiates living things from inanimate matter.

This RIDGE pattern is a continuous in time version of the PEAK pattern which I defined as the only one in the third tier of patterns in reality on the posting "Advanced Patterns". It is the manifestation of this peak pattern that makes an ideal and practical definition of what is alive, as opposed to inanimate matter.

To understand life and the world, it is vital to also fully understand this PEAK pattern. This simple pattern is essential to any living thing but essentially meaningless in the universe of inanimate matter.

The basic activities of life such as eating, work, play and, sleep all have what would be described as ideal quantities. Put simply, a peak between too little on one side and too much on the other side. We often read of athletes training to hit their "peak" on the day of the game. Such a term is meaningless in the world of non-living matter and energy.

We know that plants are alive also because each species of plant has it's peak, or ideal, amount of water, sunlight and, temperature. This peak concept effectively eliminates fires and stars from the realm of the living. A flame has no peak amount of fuel or oxygen, it only manifests a slope pattern. Simply the more, the better.

In the human world, this peak pattern is so prevalent that we could say that the very purpose of life is to manifest it. The life cycle goes from birth and reaches a peak, the prime of life, and then declines.

Our scale also clearly manifests the peak, we have more difficulty gaining knowledge of something that is either microscopic or astronomical in scale than we do of that which is closer to our own scale range. Whenever we aim at any kind of target, either literally or figuratively, the target itself represents the peak and is sorrounded by concentric zones of near-misses and further misses.

When we speak of some movement, such as Communism or loosely regulated Capitalism "running it's course", we mean that it begins, reaches it's peak, and then fades. The zig-zag of human history, in contrast to a straight line, describing how the way we put our emotions into the ideas that govern society and the way that every such idea tends to be a reaction against a previous idea, means that we, in effect, zig-zag through history instead of taking the more efficient course of a straight line. The zigs and zags form peaks.

When so-called "bubbles" form in the stock or housing markets, these are simply zig-zags with a gradual "zig" as the bubble forms, followed by a sharp "zag" when it bursts.

Put another way, it could be said that life manifests both quality and quantity, while inanimate matter manifests only quantity. The idea of quality is meaningless for non-living matter. Quality is a peak concept, while quantity is a straight line.

This pattern is so essential to life that it can be considered as the very definition of it. Thus I would like to suggest the peak symbol, an upside-down V, as the symbol of life.