All organisms on Earth, from the tiniest cell to the loftiest trees, display extraordinary powers. They effortlessly perform complex transformations of organic molecules, exhibit elaborate behaviour patterns, and indefinitely construct from raw materials in the environment more or less identical copies of themselves. How could systems of such staggering complexity and such stunning beauty ever arise? A main part of the answer, for which today there is excellent scientific evidence, was carefully chronicled by the English naturalist Charles Darwin in the years before the publication in 1859 of his epoch-making work On the Origin of Species. A modern rephrasing of his theory of natural selection goes something like this: Hereditary information is carried by large molecules known as genes, composed of nucleic acids. Different genes are responsible for the expression of different characteristics of the organism. During the reproduction of the organism, the genes also replicate and thereby pass on the instructions for various characteristics to the next generation. Occasionally, there are imperfections, called mutations, in gene replication. A mutation alters the instructions for one or more particular characteristics. The mutation also breeds true, in the sense that its capability for determining a given characteristic of the organism remains unimpaired for generations until the mutated gene is itself mutated. Some mutations, when expressed, will produce characteristics favourable for the organism; organisms with such favourable genes will reproduce preferentially over those without such genes. Most mutations, however, turn out to be deleterious and often lead to some impairment or to death of the organism. (To illustrate, it is unlikely that one can improve the functioning of a finely crafted watch by dropping it from a tall building. The watch may perform better, but this is highly improbable.) In this way, organisms slowly evolve toward greater complexity. This evolution occurs, however, only at enormous cost: modern humans, complex and reasonably well-adapted, exist only because of billions of deaths of organisms slightly less adapted and somewhat less complex. In short, Darwin’s theory of natural selection states that complex organisms evolved through time because of replication, mutation, and replication of mutations. A genetic definition of life therefore would be a system capable of evolution by natural selection. (See Darwinism.)

This definition places great emphasis on the importance of replication. Replication refers to the capacity of molecules such as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to precisely copy themselves, whereas reproduction refers to the increase in number of organisms by acts that make a new individual from its parent or parents. In any organism, enormous biological effort is directed toward reproduction, although it confers no obvious benefit on the reproducing organism itself. However, if life is defined as an entity capable of reproduction, then a mule, which is clearly alive yet does not reproduce, would be excluded from the living under this restrictive definition. Indeed, many organisms, such as hybrid mammals and plants that are past their prime, do not reproduce even though the individual cells of which they are composed may.

Life defined as a reproductive system dependent on replicating components does not rule out synthetic reproduction. For example, it should be possible to construct a machine that is capable of producing identical copies of itself from preformed building blocks but that arranges its descendants in a slightly different manner when a random change occurs in its instructions. Such a machine would of course reproduce its instructions as well. But the fact that such a machine would satisfy the genetic definition of life is not an argument against such a definition; in fact, if the building blocks were simple enough, the machine would have the capability of evolving into very complex systems that would probably have all the other properties attributed to living systems. (Some computer programmers have already claimed, on the basis of running generations of replicating and mutating computer instructions, to have created artificial life [“a-life”]; such programs do not, however, show any real freedom or awareness, and their activities are thus far limited to the insides of computers.) The genetic definition has the additional advantage of being expressed purely in functional terms; i.e., it does not depend on any particular choice of constituent molecules. The improbability of contemporary organisms—dealt with more fully below—is so great that these organisms could not possibly have arisen by purely random processes and without historical continuity. Fundamental to the genetic definition of life then seems to be the notion that a certain level of complexity cannot be achieved without natural selection.

Thermodynamic

Thermodynamics distinguishes between isolated, closed, and open systems. An isolated system is separated from the rest of the environment and exchanges neither light nor heat nor matter with its surroundings. A closed system exchanges energy but not matter. An open system is one in which both material and energetic exchanges occur. The second law of thermodynamics states that, in a closed system, no processes will tend to occur that increase the net organization (or decrease the net entropy) of the system. Thus, the universe taken as a whole is steadily moving toward a state of complete randomness, lacking any order, pattern, or beauty. This fate was popularized in the 19th century as the “heat death” of the universe.

Living organisms are manifestly organized and at first sight seem to represent a contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. Indeed, living systems might then be defined as localized regions where there is a continuous maintenance or increase in organization. Living systems, however, do not really contradict the second law. They increase their organization in regions of energy flow, and, indeed, their cycling of materials and their tendency to grow can be understood only in the context of a more general definition of the second law that applies to open as well as closed and isolated systems. In nature (except at cosmic scales, where gravity becomes a crucial factor), energy moves from being concentrated to being spread out; spontaneously occurring complex systems do not violate the second law but help energy spread out, thus producing entropy and reducing gradients.

A general statement of open-system thermodynamics is that nature abhors a gradient, a difference across a distance. Differences and gradients in nature represent improbable, preexisting organizations. Many complex systems in nature spontaneously arise to degrade gradients and persist until the gradients are nullified. A tornado, for example, is an improbable, matter-cycling system that appears in the area of a barometric pressure gradient; when the air pressure gradient is gone, the “improbable” tornado disappears. Life seems to be a similar system, but one that degrades the solar gradient, the electromagnetic difference between the extremely hot (5,800 K [5,500 °C, or 10,000 °F]) Sun and very cold (2.7 K [−270.3 °C, or −454.5 °F]) outer space. (K = kelvin. On the Kelvin temperature scale, in which 0 K [−273 °C, or −460 °F] is absolute zero, 273 K [0 °C, or 32 °F] is the freezing point of water, and 373 K [100 °C, or 212 °F] is the boiling point of water at one atmosphere pressure.) Most life on Earth is dependent on the flow of sunlight, which is utilized by photosynthetic organisms to construct complex molecules from simpler ones. Some deep-sea and cave organisms called chemoautotrophs depend on chemical gradients, such as the natural energy-producing reaction between hydrogen sulfide bubbling up from vents and oxygen dissolved in water. The organization of life on Earth can thus be seen as being driven by a natural second-law-based reduction between the energy of the hot Sun and the cooler space around it. Although life has not fully reduced the solar gradient, incorporation of carbon dioxide into chemoautotrophs and production of clouds by plants help keep Earth’s surface cooler than it would otherwise be, thereby helping to degrade the solar energy gradient.

Some scientists argue on grounds of quite general open-system thermodynamics that the organization of a system increases as energy flows through it. Moreover, energy flow leads to the development of cycles. An example of a biological cycle on Earth is the carbon cycle. Carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide is incorporated by photosynthetic or chemosynthetic organisms and converted into carbohydrates through the process of autotrophy. These carbohydrates are ultimately oxidized by heterotrophic organisms to extract useful energy locked in their chemical bonds. In the oxidation of carbohydrates, carbon dioxide is returned to the atmosphere, thus completing the cycle. It has been shown that similar cycles develop spontaneously and in the absence of life by the flow of energy through chemical systems. Biological cycles may represent natural thermodynamic cycles reinforced by a genetic apparatus. It seems doubtful that open-system thermodynamic processes in the absence of replication lead to the sorts of complexity that characterize biological systems; replication, however, may be interpreted as an especially efficient thermodynamic means of gradient breakdown—a kind of special, slow-burning “fire.” In any case, it is clear that much of the complexity of life on Earth has arisen through replication, with thermodynamically favoured pathways being used by energy-transforming organisms.

Autopoietic

A newer definition of life revolves around the idea of autopoiesis. This idea was put forth by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela and emphasizes the peculiar closure of living systems, which are alive and maintain themselves metabolically whether they succeed in reproduction or not. Unlike machines, whose governing functions are embedded by human designers, organisms are self-governing. The autopoietic definition of life resembles the physiological definition but emphasizes life’s maintenance of its own identity, its informational closure, its cybernetic self-relatedness, and its ability to make more of itself. Autopoiesis refers to self-producing, self-maintaining, self-repairing, and self-relational aspects of living systems. Living beings maintain their form by the continuous interchange and flow of chemical components. Cellular autopoietic systems are bounded by a dynamic material made by the system itself. In life on Earth the limiting material is lipid membrane studded with transport proteins fabricated by the incessantly active cell. A source of usable energy flows to all living or autopoietic systems—either light in the visible or near-visible spectrum or specific organic carbon or other chemicals such as hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, or ammonia. Energy sources that have never been adequate to maintain autopoiesis on Earth include heat, sound waves, and electromagnetic radiation outside the visible or near-visible spectrum.

One of the difficulties in defining life is that the only example is life found on the third planet from the Sun. On Earth all life’s autopoietic systems require a supply of water in its liquid state for self-maintenance of their parts. Taken together, all transformations that underlie autopoiesis require six elements: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. The chemical components of all living entities are fashioned primarily from these elements.

The smallest autopoietic system on Earth is a living bacterial cell. (Viruses, plasmids, and other replicating molecules cannot, even in principle, behave as an autopoietic system; no matter how much food, liquid water, and serviceable energy they are provided, they still require cells for their continuity and duplication.) Some cells, such as Carsonella ruddii, have fewer than 200 genes and proteins, but they, like organelles and viruses, are not autopoietic, since they must be inside an autopoietic system (living cell) to metabolize and survive. No self-bounded autopoietic system smaller than a cell with at least 450 proteins and the genes that code for these proteins has ever been described. Larger than bacteria are other autopoietic systems of intermediate size such as protists, fungal spores, mules and other individual mammals, and plants such as oak trees or poppies. Autopoietic entities at even larger levels include ecosystems such as coral reefs, prairies, or ponds. The maximal or largest single autopoietic system known is referred to as “Gaia,” named by English atmospheric scientist James E. Lovelock for Gaea, the ancient Greek personification of Earth. Gaia is basically a closed thermodynamic system because there is little interchange of matter with the extraterrestrial environment. There is evidence that the global, Gaian system of life shows organism-like properties, such as regulation of atmospheric chemistry, global mean temperature, and oceanic salinity over multimillion-year time spans. Such regulation may be understood as part of life’s organization as a complex and cyclical open thermodynamic system.