Can life be defined? Well, how would you go about it? Well, of course, you'd go to Encyclopedia Britannica and open at L. No, of course you don't do that; you put it somewhere in Google. And then you might get something.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I naively thought that we could have a molecular definition for life, come up with a set of genes that would minimally define life. Nature just refuses to be so easily quantified.
What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.
The meaning of life is life.
Life to me is defined by uncertainty. Uncertainty is the state in which we live, and there is no way to outfox it.
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
We have to find our own purposes in life, which are not derived directly from our scientific history.
Whatever life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to all animals and plants, and which is not directly operative in the inorganic world.
Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.
In our quest to define and describe the world, we have crisscrossed the oceans and continents, compiling exhaustive knowledge about its life forms and features, and extended our physical reach through technology, which provides us instantaneous and pervasive access to information about seemingly everything.