Two weeks ago, several (Nasa) scientists made an important discovery: life is more complex then we thought. Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Issue is that these scientists used a very narrow definition of the concept "life". In their experience life only exists in the form of specific biological processes and elements, which combined lead to all forms of life as we currently see around us. This approach to defining life has a severe drawback: it only captures biological life-forms, and as they discovered, only a subset of those as well.
It seems to me that a broader definition of the concept of life is required. But where to start?
(An interesting read and good overview of the many issues is given by Joseph Morales over at http://baharna.com/philos/life.htm )
To me "life" is the emergent behavior of complex natural interactions. If these interactions lead to recognizable entities, which evolve, learn and grow, then I would consider them alive. This is a statement with a lot of words that need further explination, definition and nuances. A large part of the posts in this blog will be dedicated to these concepts, focussing on these building blocks of life.
But one consequence of my approach to the concept of "life" is that I consider a much larger set of phenomena part of the "living" category. For example, as much as a ant-colony as a whole is alive, I would also consider a religion as a living organism. The traffic patterns around cities also "lead a life of their own". Many other examples can be found.
From this perspective the question of the existence of extraterrestrial life is also interesting: Isn't it interesting that we consider our sun alive, compared to old "dead-stars"? We are using the "life"-jargon for stars and galaxies, perhaps more correctly then we're giving ourselves credits for. Those are already existing, proven, extraterrestrial life-forms, we just need to acknowledge them as such.
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