Cougar: yes thats the kind of thing I'm driving at, thanks for the link!
It is an issue with the definition of life, but the definition of life is a mainstream concept, so suggesting it be changed would fall under against the mainstream wouldn't it? I'm not taking the mick if it belongs somewhere else please move it! I'm suggesting that 'alive' be an umbrella term for any system that has a certain amount of complexity, and that it doesn't need to show any specific behavoir other than having that level of complexity to qualify. Personally I'd spread the umbrella wider than kauffman, to include dusty plasmas and programming systems at least.

Lepton: I apologise for any offence, I think the difference between several qualities with seperate origins being assumed to be linked inextricably and being labelled life, and recognising them as being seperate and possibly even unrelated is important.

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For me it's enough for the garden to be beautifull; why do so many want to see fairies at the bottom?

"Many of those people are not getting four when adding two and two; many of them aren't even getting five or twenty-two. They're getting potato."
Gillianren