What is life?

Author(s): David Lynn Abel

Life is programmed, logic-gate-controlled, and cybernetically processed. Life is algorithmic with sequentially completed (“halting”) operations. Homeostatic metabolism is mediated by highly integrated circuits of configurable switch-settings, both genetic and epigenetic. Prescriptive Information (PI) controls, not just constrains, life’s exquisitely functional processes. Life’s instructions are conceptual, not just complex. Life is Computation. Naturalistic science has been pursuing abiogenesis and life’s definition on a purely physicodynamic basis for many decades with great frustration. Increasingly, investigators have been more willing to acknowledge prominent elements of life’s formal orchestration. Physicalism fails to explain the reality of “systems biology,” bona fide formal organization (as opposed to the merely redundant self-ordering of fractal, chaos and complexity theories), ingenious semiosis using representational physical symbol vehicles in material symbol systems, various abstract codes, superimposed multidimensional coding in the same string of symbols, linguistic-like rules rather than laws, and controls (rather than mere constraints). None of these formal aspects of sub-cellular metabolism are reducible to mere Shannon Uncertainty measures or irreversible nonequilibrium thermodynamic “possibilities.” “Assembly Theory” fails miserably to explain, let alone measure, the difficulty of orchestrating homeostatic metabolism. Life’s processes often seem to be indistinguishable from artificial computation by digital devices. Could it be that computation is the essence of life’s elusive definition? Life is not a thermodynamic state. Life demonstrates persistently programmed computational “processes.” Life is programmed and conducted by pragmatic cybernetic “operations.” Life consists of Sustained Functional Systems (SFS) that transduce useless wasted energy into usable energy, carrying life uniquely far from equilibrium. No function known to modern engineering measures up to the sophistication of sub-cellular nanocomputer and molecular machine biofunction. Is life’s computation merely physicodynamic, or is it every bit as abstract, conceptual, nonphysical and formal as the mathematical laws that define and govern physicality?