NDLI: A New Criterion for Demarcating Life from Non-Life

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Hateren, J. H.
Copyright Year	2013
Abstract	Criteria for demarcating life from non-life are important for deciding whether new candidate systems, either discovered extraterrestrially or constructed in the laboratory, are genuinely alive or not. They are also important for understanding the origin of life and its evolution. Current criteria are either too restrictive or too extensive. The new criterion proposed here poses that a system is living when it is capable of utilizing active causation, at evolutionary or behavioural timescales. Active causation is produced when the organism uses an estimate of its own Darwinian fitness to modulate the variance of stochasticity that drives hereditary or behavioural changes. The changes are subsequently fed back to the fitness estimate and used in the next cycle of a feedback loop. The ability to use a self-estimated fitness in this way is an evolved property of the organism, and the way in which fitness is estimated is therefore controlled and stabilized by Darwinian evolution. The hereditary and behavioural trajectories resulting from this mechanism combine predictability with unpredictability, and the mechanism produces a form of self-directed agency in living organisms that is absent from non-living systems.
Starting Page	491
Ending Page	500
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01696149
Journal	Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres
Volume Number	43
Issue Number	6
e-ISSN	15730875
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2014-01-09
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	Active causation Agency Darwinian evolution Definition of life Spontaneity Life Sciences Astrophysics and Astroparticles Earth Sciences Astronomy, Observations and Techniques Biochemistry
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Medicine Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Space and Planetary Science

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