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My favorite definition of life is "something that uses energy to increase complexity", i.e. locally decreases entropy. This includes viruses and even computer viruses, but does not include rocks, planets, fire, or even computer hardware.
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I like that one to, but which side of the line does a hurricane fall? It's a stable structure, that uses heat energy drawn from the the ocean to create and maintain itself. It doesn't reproduce but as it grows and it's structure becomes better defined it is certainly increasing in order and complexity.
It might be argued that a hurricane is a structure that
results from the flow of energy from the sea to the air, but that seems to me like a chicken and egg argument. Besides, can anyone show that life is a decrease in entropy that uses the flow of energy, rather than one that results from a flow or imbalance of energy that was there anyway? It doesn't seem like a clear cut thing to me.