What is life? Erwin Schrodinger, of cat-in-a-box-simultaneously-living and-dead fame, wrote an entire book of that title on the subject, arguing that life emerges from the physics of “Negentropy” or negative entropy, i.e., extracting order from the environment. However, in some way as yet not understood, otherwise inert chemicals and minerals, themselves composed of the very same bits of subatomic matter as all other things – electrons, protons, neutrons and so forth – became alive. The momentum of this living impulse, now billions of years old, continues to this day.
Taking his cue from Schrodinger, Chemist Addy Pross titled his book What is Life? When Chemistry Becomes Biology, wherein he attempts to explain the origin of life as the result of self-catalyzing chemical molecule combinations, particularly nucleic acids. He does not speculate upon life on other planets, nor the conditions on Earth that led up to the opportunity for certain life-giving chemical combinations. Suffice to say, all attempts to combine various chemical and mineral components and subject them to a range of conditions have never produced living things, except in fiction.
Philosopher Jane Bennett offers the view in her book Vital Matter that matter is itself “agentic,” which is to say exhibits a vitality inherent to its existence. If that is true, then the arising of life was and is an inevitable event as matter itself seeks an active role in existence.
Whatever the theory, we are left with an answer akin to the “old top hat” of Frosty the Snowman: magic. Magic remains as viable an answer as any other. “Sumpin’ happened,” and we don’t know what it is, do we, Mrs. Jones? This has led, of course, to all sorts of supernatural explanations, none of which can be empirically proven, but are widely popular nonetheless.
My own experience is that a year ago my wife Norma was happily puttering around the house, thrilled with the ease of mopping our new condo’s bamboo flooring, and today her ashes are in a box. What was her living body has been reduced by the furnace of cremation to inert chemical components. From a purely material standpoint, it’s the same Norma as she ever was, but then of course, it’s not. Hugging a box of ashes feels morbid, not comforting.
Carl Sagan offered the view that life and death are transitions within a universe of constant transition. The physical material of which we are made, he noted, originated in stars and has been continuously recycled for 4.5 billion years – nothing wasted, nothing lost. The energy of life gets recycled too, he suggests, and does not disappear. His view mirrors that of the Buddhist Heart Sutra, which offers that “there is no birth and no cessation,” pointing to the same transitional nature of existence.
I will confess that despite my interest in such conceptual thought, I remain emotionally entangled. That on one day we are living and breathing and on another day not, still feels strange and unreal. Eventually, in humanity’s oldest story, it’s what will happen to me. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” we’re told, and it’s undeniably true, but how to work with that truth is everyone’s dilemma.
“What is life?” The question may as well be “what is death?” Perhaps neither question is worth too much thought. Perhaps a better question to ponder is “What now?”
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