Jenna Brawley

Professor Fost
Life Unlimited
9 December, 2014
Fall Term Reflection
In the first ten weeks of Life Unlimited alone, we have already explored
numerous fascinating topics, including life and death, natural and artificial life,
emergence and evolution, and the relationship between science and religion. Through
readings, videos, artificial life simulations, and class discussions, many of my preexisting questions regarding these topics have been answered, in turn generating
countless other questions. The course thus far has heightened my curiosity about the past,
present, and future of all aspects of life.
The focus of the first term of this course has been centered on the fundamental
question, What is life?. In the first week of class, when the question was first
introduced, the only answer I could think of was life islife. It was then that I
realized I had no idea how to even begin to coherently explain what life is or what it
means to be alive. I looked up the definition of life according to the Merriam-Webster
dictionary only to find definitions such as the period from birth to death, the quality
that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body, and a principle or
force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. I found
these definitions of life to be inadequate and unsatisfying. However, just a few weeks into
the term, once we had begun to read and discuss Lifes Ratchet, a clearer view of what
life is began to form in my head.
As a class, by the end of the term, we managed to compose a general definition
for the term life which reads as follows:
Life is a set of interactions between molecules that work together to create a selfsustaining organism, either single- or multi-cellular. These interactions include
the fortuitous use of thermal (high entropy) energy (e.g. in motor proteins like
kinesin and myosin), and the more predictable capitalization of food (low
entropy) energy. Life arises through evolution, i.e. the process of natural selection
caused by random, adaptive mutations in a reproducing population.
Finally, ten weeks after our search began, we had developed what, in my mind, was an
adequate definition of life. However, this is not a permanent definition. The idea of what
life is has changed dramatically over the last centuries, and it will continue to change.
The definition of life and what it means to be alive will evolve alongside scientific
advancements, especially in the field of biotechnology. As life is modified over the
coming years, it will need to be redefined.
Once we had agreed upon this definition of life, we were asked to decide what
aspects of our definition were facts and which were opinions. In week six of the course,
there had been a class discussion regarding the differences between fact and opinion. We
concluded that the fact category could be separated into two subcategories: unknowable
facts (e.g. the origin of life), and knowable facts (e.g. Earth is not the only planet in the
universe). We decided that opinions could also be divided into subcategories: defensible

opinions, indefensible or raw opinions (e.g. the best flavor of ice cream is vanilla), and
delusional opinions (e.g. Kim Kardashian is a time traveller who created life on Earth
billions of years ago). Based on this idea of what constitutes fact and opinion, the class
generally agreed upon the idea that our definition was neither fact nor opinion, but rather
a theory.
In my opinion, any one aspect of this course alone, whether it be the reading,
videos, class discussions, or work with Avida-ED, would not have be sufficient in
providing the class with the information we needed to form an adequate answer to the
fundamental question what is life. My views of what life is and how it works have
remained mechanistic over the course of the term, but my knowledge of life and its inner
workings has increased immensely. I am looking forward to learning more about the
opportunities and risks involving advancements in genetic engineering and synthetic
biology in the upcoming term.