Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Варела, Франсиско" in Russian language version.
Although the scientists, technicians, and others who participate in studies of life easily distinguish living matter from inert or dead matter, none can give a completely inclusive, concise definition of life itself. Part of the problem is that the core properties of life—growth, change, reproduction, active resistance to external perturbation, and evolution—involve transformation or the capacity for transformation. Living processes are thus antithetical to a desire for tidy classification or final definition. To take one example, the number of chemical elements involved with life has increased with time; an exhaustive list of the material constituents of life would therefore be premature. Nonetheless, most scientists implicitly use one or more of the metabolic, physiological, biochemical, genetic, thermodynamic, and autopoietic definitions given below.
Although the scientists, technicians, and others who participate in studies of life easily distinguish living matter from inert or dead matter, none can give a completely inclusive, concise definition of life itself. Part of the problem is that the core properties of life—growth, change, reproduction, active resistance to external perturbation, and evolution—involve transformation or the capacity for transformation. Living processes are thus antithetical to a desire for tidy classification or final definition. To take one example, the number of chemical elements involved with life has increased with time; an exhaustive list of the material constituents of life would therefore be premature. Nonetheless, most scientists implicitly use one or more of the metabolic, physiological, biochemical, genetic, thermodynamic, and autopoietic definitions given below.
