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How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication?
Is it possible to understand the very nature of ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ based on contemporary biology? The usual spontaneous reaction is: “No way. Life is far too complicated. It involves both material- and an immaterial dimensions, and this combination exceeds the capacities of the human brain.” In this...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Taylor & Francis
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4802813/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27064373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1059977 |
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author | De Loof, Arnold |
author_facet | De Loof, Arnold |
author_sort | De Loof, Arnold |
collection | PubMed |
description | Is it possible to understand the very nature of ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ based on contemporary biology? The usual spontaneous reaction is: “No way. Life is far too complicated. It involves both material- and an immaterial dimensions, and this combination exceeds the capacities of the human brain.” In this paper, a fully contrarian stand is taken. Indeed it will be shown that without invoking any unknown principle(s) unambiguous definitions can be logically deduced. The key? First ask the right questions. Next, thoroughly imbue contemporary biology with the principles of communication, including both its ‘hardware’ and its ‘software’ aspects. An integrative yet simple principle emerges saying that: 1. All living matter is invariably organized as sender-receiver compartments that incessantly handle and transfer information (= communicate); 2. The ‘communicating compartment’ is better suited to serve as universal unit of structure, function and evolution than ‘the (prokaryotic) cell’, the smallest such unit; 3. ‘Living matter’ versus ‘non-living’ are false opposites while ‘still alive’ and ‘just not alive anymore’ are true opposites; 4. ‘Death’ ensues when a given sender-receiver compartment irreversibly loses its ability to handle information at its highest level of compartmental organization; 5. The verb ‘Life’ (L) denotes nothing else than the total sum (∑) of all acts of communication (C) executed by a sender-receiver at all its levels of compartmental organization: L = ∑C; 6. Any act of communication is a problem-solving act; 6. Any Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) should have the definition of Life at its core. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4802813 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Taylor & Francis |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48028132016-04-08 How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? De Loof, Arnold Commun Integr Biol Opinion Article Is it possible to understand the very nature of ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ based on contemporary biology? The usual spontaneous reaction is: “No way. Life is far too complicated. It involves both material- and an immaterial dimensions, and this combination exceeds the capacities of the human brain.” In this paper, a fully contrarian stand is taken. Indeed it will be shown that without invoking any unknown principle(s) unambiguous definitions can be logically deduced. The key? First ask the right questions. Next, thoroughly imbue contemporary biology with the principles of communication, including both its ‘hardware’ and its ‘software’ aspects. An integrative yet simple principle emerges saying that: 1. All living matter is invariably organized as sender-receiver compartments that incessantly handle and transfer information (= communicate); 2. The ‘communicating compartment’ is better suited to serve as universal unit of structure, function and evolution than ‘the (prokaryotic) cell’, the smallest such unit; 3. ‘Living matter’ versus ‘non-living’ are false opposites while ‘still alive’ and ‘just not alive anymore’ are true opposites; 4. ‘Death’ ensues when a given sender-receiver compartment irreversibly loses its ability to handle information at its highest level of compartmental organization; 5. The verb ‘Life’ (L) denotes nothing else than the total sum (∑) of all acts of communication (C) executed by a sender-receiver at all its levels of compartmental organization: L = ∑C; 6. Any act of communication is a problem-solving act; 6. Any Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) should have the definition of Life at its core. Taylor & Francis 2015-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4802813/ /pubmed/27064373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1059977 Text en © 2015 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. |
spellingShingle | Opinion Article De Loof, Arnold How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? |
title | How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? |
title_full | How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? |
title_fullStr | How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? |
title_full_unstemmed | How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? |
title_short | How to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely L = ∑C, to “What is Life?” using the principles of communication? |
title_sort | how to deduce and teach the logical and unambiguous answer, namely l = ∑c, to “what is life?” using the principles of communication? |
topic | Opinion Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4802813/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27064373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1059977 |
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