What is Life?

As you may remember, we are not going to cover Chapter 18 in class. Nobody has requested this topic for a term paper. Since time is running short, I  write here a few ideas based on Caselli & Ceccarelli, Jacob Berkowitz and our textbook.

This topic has always been one of my favorites. We distinguish objects according to whether they are alive or not. Since we start to experience the world, we can distinguish the difference. There is even a whole discipline, Biology, which purpose is to study life. Nevertheless since Miller and Urey produced organic chemicals out of inorganic ones, and Watson and Crick, deciphered the genetic code, it has been up for grabs, what is life and what is not.

Berkowitz describes in "The Stardust Revolution", that the Universe is filled with organic material.

our existence. Our extreme genealogical searching isn't just about tracing our origins; it is also about how this cosmic family tree connects us with others. For it's in this connection that we find meaning and belonging. Her question was as much about her -- about us -- as it was about any cosmic cousins whom we might encounter.

To be at home in the cosmos isn't just to know our stellar origins but to find our cosmic kin. In this moment of the Stardust Revolution, we are as in facing death, looking at the deepest truths of who and what we are, so that we might sink into the wonder of what it all means. Something in us deeply wants to connect with a larger, living cosmos, not just for what it will tell us about what's out there, but also what it will tell us about what's in each of us, about what each of us is. I, like the dying woman who wrote to Bill Borucki, would like to share in this next step before I return to stardust."

Life is everything, we are discovering a continuum, and we belong.