Guy Hoelzer  wrote:

> in article bo8kot$2dmi$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Tim Tyler at tim{at}tt1lock.org
> wrote on 11/4/03 8:39 AM:
> 
> > Emiliano  wrote or quoted:
> > 
> >> The memory is quite blurred, now, but it sounded something like
> >> c.i.t.r.o.e.n.s. (an acronymus meaning the list of features that
> >> define a living organismus).
> >> If somebody can help me with that, it would be a great help for me.
> > 
> > Leslie Orgel's term for:
> > 
> > ``Complex Information-Transforming Reproducing Objects that Evolve
> > by Natural Selection''
> 
> This definition would seem to have a problem in that the first organisms
> would not be considered to be living things because they had not evolved by
> natural selection.

They could evolve by a partial selection - the continuation of chemical
reaction hypercycles that more efficiently sequester and employ monomers
than the other reactions in the chemotron.
> 
> I rather like the definition of living things as anything that has a
> metabolism and homeostatic mechanisms.
> 
Circular - you have to define "metabolism" in a way that excludes
ordinary redox reactions, and the only way to do this is to make
reference to living things. Otherwise a burning pool of hydrocarbons is
living.

-- 
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly, 
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
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