As part of my ongoing research within the Energy-Impulse-Information-Tensor (EIIT) framework, I am delving into the intricate characteristics that distinguish living and non-living systems, as well as the profound concepts of life and death. This framework offers a holistic perspective to comprehend these concepts, viewing life as a complex system that harnesses energy, responds to impulses, processes information, and evolves within the fabric of spacetime.
1. **Energy**: Living organisms actively harness and convert energy to carry out various functions such as growth, reproduction, and maintenance. This energy is typically derived from food (in animals) or sunlight (in plants) and is used to drive biochemical reactions. In the EIIT framework, this energy utilization can be represented as a flow of energy within the tensor, which is absent in non-living entities. Non-living entities, like a rock or a molecule of water, may contain potential energy or kinetic energy due to their physical state, but they do not actively convert or use energy for processes like growth or reproduction.
2. **Impulse**: Living organisms respond to stimuli or impulses from their environment. This could range from a plant bending towards light to a human responding to a complex thought. In the EIIT framework, these responses can be represented as changes in the impulse components of the tensor. Non-living entities, on the other hand, do not respond to impulses in the same way. They may change state due to external forces, but these changes are not active responses and do not involve information processing.
3. **Information**: Living organisms process information. This is evident in the genetic information carried in DNA, which guides the growth and development of an organism. Additionally, organisms process information from their environment to make decisions. In the EIIT framework, this information processing can be represented as changes in the information components of the tensor. Non-living entities do not process information in the same way.
4. **Tensor**: The tensor in the EIIT framework represents the spacetime in which the living organisms exist and evolve. They are born, they grow, they reproduce, and they die. Over generations, populations of organisms evolve, driven by the forces of natural selection and genetic drift. Non-living entities, while existing within spacetime, do not evolve in the same way.
The boundary between living and non-living can be blurry, especially when we consider entities like viruses. Viruses exhibit some but not all characteristics of life. They contain genetic information and can evolve over time, but they do not have their own metabolism and cannot reproduce without a host cell. In the EIIT framework, viruses could be considered as systems that can process information and evolve over time, but do not independently utilize energy or respond to impulses.
As for the difference between life and death, in the EIIT framework, death could be considered as a state where the organism no longer processes energy, responds to impulses, or processes information. The system that was once a living organism no longer evolves over time in the same way. However, it's important to note that while the individual organism ceases to function, the energy and matter it was composed of continue to exist and transition into other forms and systems. This aligns with the principle of conservation of energy and the concept of information conservation, suggesting that while the specific configuration of energy and information that represented the living organism is gone, the energy and information themselves persist.
Some years back I have expressed my views regarding life which I submit herewith for your information .''Our life is a gift of our creator & our entry to our MOTHER EARTH is a fruit of biological reason but which our arrival as human beings we all have with us the resulting fruits of our action of previous lives for which we are to make our entity on this earth.
Where we talk regarding the life living for the time join with the life how one should think regarding the life as non living .
Life is the aspect of existence that processes, acts, reacts, evaluates, and evolves through growth (reproduction and metabolism). It consists of cells which are considered the fundamental units of life that self-replicate, metabolize, and are open for mutations, without which genetic information would remain unchangeable, and evolution would be impossible.
So, the living things are highly organized. For instance, we have unicellular organisms in which in each cell, atoms make up molecules, which make up cell organelles and structures. Also, we have multicellular organisms like us humans, who are made up of many cells. The cells in multicellular organisms may be specialized to do different jobs and are organized into tissues, such as connective tissue, epithelial tissue, muscle, and nervous tissue.
On the other hand, non-living things may show some, but not all, properties of life. For example, crystals of snow are organized though they don't have cells, they can grow but they don’t meet the other criteria of life. On similar lines, a fire can grow, reproduce by creating new fires, and respond to stimuli and can arguably even be said to “metabolize.” However, fire is not organized, does not maintain homeostasis, and also lacks the genetic information required for evolution.
There is another aspect which I would like to bring out. Living things may keep some properties of life when they become non-living. For instance, if you look at the wood in a chair under a microscope, you might see traces of cells that used to make up the living tree. However, now the wood is no longer alive, and having been made into a chair, this wood can no longer grow, metabolize, maintain homeostasis or reproduce.
Viruses can be considered at the borderline of living and non-living because they show both the characterstics of a living and a non-living. They react like non-living in the free atmosphere but when they enter the body of any living organism they show the features of a living organism and start reproduction.
Life in a biological has 5 categories: cellular organization, energy intake, growth and development, homostasis, response to environment, and ability to adapt. Viruses are debated wether they are alive or not alive because they do not consit of cells and they can not reproduce without hijacking a cell.