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DEGREES OF LIFELESSNESS. “Building on these dimensions-related differences, we also computed a single value of overall lifeness for each more-or-less-alive entity, thereby providing an empirically-founded quantification of degrees of lifeness.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn

PROPERTY CLUSTERS. “They also show how different degrees of overall lifeness can be achieved in different ways. This multidimensional way of mapping borderline entities exemplifies the need of reformulating questions of the type “Is X alive?” into questions of the type “What is the lifeness of X?”. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn

ANALYSIS. “We hence defined an 8-dimensional “lifeness space” on the basis of these property clusters and used semantic proximity as a metric for assessing the relative positioning of the target entities along these dimensions. These findings corroborate the intuition that different entities perform differently along each lifeness dimension.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn

“RESULTS show eight major clusters of properties: two that relate to metabolism, one to structure, one to genetics, another to evolvability, and three others to environment-interactions broadly construed. By measuring the semantic proximity of the words representing the target entities to the set of words associated with each one of the property clusters, we found that this semantic proximity varied.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn

Triplets. View in LinkedIn

STRANGE UNIVERSE. “Phenomena of the physical world, as immediately given to us, appear in inexhaustible structures and formations of matter.” https://lnkd.in/dQ9VgzAr View in LinkedIn

LIFE ON A SPECTRUM. “If it turns out that lifeness is gradual, how do the different more-or-less alive entities fare relative to one another?” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn

THE OUTLIERS. “The menagerie of microbiology also includes artificially simplified versions of natural organisms, specific RNA viral particles or viroids, viral agents named satellites, viruses of viruses that go by the name of virophages, autonomous DNA strands or plasmids, prions, and still others.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn

THE CASE AGAINST REALITY. “The real world, we assume, consists of cats and stairs and other objects in space and time. They exist even if no living creature observes them. Our perceptions of snakes and apples , and even of space and time, do not reveal objective reality. It’s that the very language of objects in space and time is simply the wrong language to describe objective reality.” (Professor Donald Hoffman). https://lnkd.in/dQb2SBfK View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on a groundbreaking paper suggesting that life is a continuum rather than all or nothing. This is compatible with the origin of life from inert chemicals, which surely was a gradual process rather than Frankenstein’s life-giving jolt of electricity. It also solves the embarrassing dilemma that biology has no consensus definition for life and has adopted numerous ridiculous positions. After the inevitable resistance and the bilious outrage is over, this will become the new paradigm in biology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02356-w View in LinkedIn