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Fundamentally life is just patterns of information and their associated support structures capable of reproducing and adapting to their environment. There reall
by john_b 12y ago
Fundamentally life is just patterns of information and their associated support structures capable of reproducing and adapting to their environment. There really is no answer to the question of "why" life reproduces because life that does not reproduce ceases to be life. The reproduction component is inherent in its definition.
As to why our universe is one which supports life, nobody really knows. Some invoke the anthropic principle, but that is more of a philosophical answer than a scientific one.
- snowwrestler 12y ago> As to why our universe is one which supports life, nobody really knows. There's an implicit distinction in this statement, between the universe and life. Really, life is part of the universe too. I'm familiar with the anthropic principle, but it doesn't tell us whether life is a necessary outcome of the physical laws of our universe, or whether it's just one of many accidental outcomes that are not forbidden by the laws of our universe. Both of those situations satisfy the anthropic principle, but are very different. For example, we could speculate about a universe in which the nuclear strong force is stronger than it is here. Based on our theories of quantum mechanics and gravity, we can predict how that would affect, for example, star formation. Isaac Asimov explores this idea in "The Gods Themselves." But Asimov also predicts what alien life would be like in that universe, and there he's on much shakier ground, because nothing in our theories of quantum mechanics or gravity predicts life. We don't know how chemical systems become alive...there's even not solid agreement on the definitions.