This is Part 2, a continuation of my thoughts in Part 1 - to give it a more philosophical touch on the definition of life in this link:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2025/10/what-is-life-dialogue-between-biology.html
Life is the most familiar and yet the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe. Every second, countless living things awaken, feed, divide, heal, and die; still, the essence that makes them alive remains elusive. The cell biologist defines life in it by its metabolism and replication, the physicist by energy exchange and entropy, the philosopher by consciousness, and the theologian by the breath of God. Each perspective touches part of a greater truth, and together they form a dialogue between science and spirit, a conversation still unfinished.
Biology begins its answer with the cell, that shimmering unit of order in a sea of chaos. Within its fragile membrane, thousands of reactions proceed in exquisite coordination, examples, proteins fold, DNA copies, ATP fuels every pulse of work. The biologist calls this self-sustaining network “autopoiesis”, the ability of matter to maintain and reproduce itself. Yet even as we map every gene and molecule, something greater seems to hover above the chemistry, like a melody arising from vibrating strings. A living system is not merely a collection of parts; it is dynamic wholeness sustained by information, pattern, and purpose.
Physiology extends the story into the rhythms of energy. Life feeds on disequilibrium. Every heartbeat, every neuron’s spark, depends on gradients, of ions, gases, and potentials. When these gradients flatten, life ceases. From the standpoint of thermodynamics, a living organism is a local rebellion against entropy, continuously importing free energy from its surroundings to keep its inner order intact. Schrödinger, pondering this paradox, wrote that organisms “feed on negative entropy.” We might say more simply that life borrows time from the universe’s long drift toward disorder.
Yet thermodynamics also humbles biology. No creature can outrun the second law forever. Cells age, tissues falter, and entropy reclaims what structure had defied it. Death, in this light, is not a punishment but a physical reconciliation - a return of organized energy to cosmic equilibrium. Still, even as matter decays, information can endure: in offspring, in memory, in the genome that whispers forward through time. Thus physics does not extinguish meaning; it transposes it into new forms.
Philosophy approaches from another side. The vitalists once argued that living beings possess a special essence, a “vital spark” beyond chemistry. Modern science dismissed that notion when it learned to synthesize organic compounds from inorganic ones, yet the intuition persists that something non-mechanical animates the living. Today, some philosophers of mind echo that intuition when they ask whether consciousness can emerge from matter alone. Is awareness merely an algorithm of neurons, or is it the universe becoming self-aware through us? Between mechanism and mystery lies the field where wonder still grows.
Across cultures, humanity has never been content with a purely mechanical account of life. Ancient Egyptians spoke of the ka, the life-force breathed into each person. In Hindu thought, prana is the cosmic breath that circulates through all beings. Chinese philosophy calls it qi, the flowing energy of heaven and earth. The Hebrew Scriptures describe creation with a similar image: “The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). In this simple verse, dust and breath meet, the physical and the divine entwined.
The biological breath and the biblical breath, though different in language, describe the same marvel: that matter can host awareness, desire, and compassion. Oxygen enters the lungs, diffuses into blood, fuels the mitochondria that power thought and love. But breath is more than gas exchange; it is the symbol of participation, the rhythmic reminder that life is shared. Each inhalation draws in the world; each exhalation returns a part of ourselves. When the final breath leaves, the body remains, but the pattern - the harmony of exchanges- is gone.
From a thermodynamic viewpoint, this cessation is simply the collapse of gradients; from a spiritual viewpoint, it is the release of spirit. Both can be true within their frames. The scientist observes the dispersal of energy; the believer perceives a passage. Between them stands the mystery that language can barely hold.
If we compare definitions, science emphasizes organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, and reproduction. Theology speaks of soul, purpose, and divine image. Yet neither definition alone suffices. An artificial cell might one day mimic every metabolic step, but would it feel alive? A theologian might affirm that all breath comes from God, but must also acknowledge the physical processes that sustain it. The two accounts do not cancel each other; they complete one another like stereo channels revealing depth.
Death, therefore, is not the antithesis of life but part of its continuity. The atoms that once formed a heartbeat soon nourish soil, plankton, or star-dust anew. Energy changes costume but not existence. As Ecclesiastes reminds us, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Even in decay, life’s story expands.
Culturally, people have translated this intuition into rituals and ethics. Funerary rites, from the pyramids to modern memorials, affirm that life’s essence deserves reverence. Philosophers from Aristotle to Bergson spoke of entelechy or élan vital, a striving toward fulfillment that shapes every organism. In modern biology, this striving becomes the language of homeostasis and feedback loops, systems perpetually adjusting to preserve integrity. Whether we call it purpose or regulation, the tendency is the same: life seeks to remain itself.
The dialogue between biology and theology grows most intimate when we ask not what life is, but why it is. Evolution explains the mechanisms of adaptation, yet it cannot alone address why the universe gives rise to beings capable of asking questions. Physics can chart the energy exchanges of a heartbeat, yet it cannot explain why music can quicken it. Meaning itself seems to bloom in the interstices between data and devotion.
In recent decades, the science of complexity has offered a bridge. From chaos theory to systems biology, we learn that self-organization can arise spontaneously from simple rules, that feedback can produce order from noise. But even this elegant mathematics evokes wonder: why should the laws of nature permit such harmony at all? The more we decode the machinery of life, the more its existence feels like a gift rather than an accident.
Perhaps that is why poets and prophets speak of life as light. “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). Light and life are both acts of transformation, energy becoming visibility, matter becoming awareness. Thermodynamics tells us that every photon absorbed by a leaf becomes sugar, and every sugar molecule can become thought. Scripture tells us that divine light enlightens every human being. The metaphors converge: to live is to shine.
From a public-health perspective, recognizing this unity carries practical wisdom. To care for life is to respect its delicate balance of energy and purpose - nutrition, rest, love, and community all sustain the thermodynamic miracle within us. Pollution, exploitation, and neglect are not merely ethical failures; they are violations of the very principles that keep systems alive. The stewardship of life therefore extends from cell biology to planetary ecology.
And yet, amid this grandeur, life remains intimate. It begins in the invisible union of molecules, grows in the warmth of a mother’s body, learns to walk, to hope, to forgive. Each personal story is a local expression of the universal drive to persist, to connect, to transcend. When we say someone has “lost the will to live,” we are describing not only biochemical exhaustion but the dimming of meaning. Spirit and physiology intertwine until the last pulse.
So, what is life? It is a self-maintaining pattern of matter and energy, open to the flow of the universe, able to transform and be transformed. It is the dance between entropy and information, between dust and breath. It is the signature of the cosmos learning to love through conscious beings. To describe it purely in formulas is to know its skeleton; to encounter it with reverence is to touch its soul.
In my own conviction as simple lim ju boo by name, or by my Chinese name - lim ru wu, (林 如 武) after following both microscopes and scriptures, I believe life is neither random chemistry nor magic alone. It is the language through which the universe, and perhaps its Creator - speaks coherence into chaos. Every cell, every heartbeat, every act of compassion is a syllable in that divine dialogue. When science measures, it listens to the grammar; when faith worships, it hears the music. Both are hearing the same voice.
And when the breath finally leaves, I imagine it not as extinction but translation. The molecules return to soil and star; the pattern returns to the Source that first uttered it. Between the physicist’s entropy and the psalmist’s praise, a single truth gleams: “I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). Life is that wonder made visible.
References
1. Schrödinger E. What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. Cambridge University Press, 1944.
2. Prigogine I., Stengers I. Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Bantam, 1984.
3. Margulis L., Sagan D. What Is Life? University of California Press, 1995.
4. Kauffman S. A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life. Oxford University Press, 2019.
5. Ecclesiastes 12:7 (King James Version).
6. Genesis 2:7 (King James Version).
7. John 1:4 (King James Version).
8. Psalm 139:14 (King James Version).
9. Bergson H. Creative Evolution. Macmillan, 1911.
10. Capra F. The Systems View of Life. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
My next 3 articles spread out over next two weeks, shall be on Molecular Biology, namely:
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