From James Veale, Cambridge, UK
Hillary Shaw suggests a definition of what constitutes life (Letters, 25 April). It is defined as “a bounded system containing a readable information code that can locally decrease entropy”. This seemed to me to succinctly encapsulate all forms of life that we know about, and reduced a complicated concept to a simple idea in a really satisfying way – I liked it a lot.
Then, two weeks later, I opened my fridge and realised that it, too, decreases entropy locally and contains readable (binary) information that tells its “body” how to do it – how annoying! Can we extend the definition to exclude systems that were created by other readable information-encoded, entropy-decreasing systems?
Perhaps we could, but while such an extension would rule out fridges, I assume it would also exclude babies and genetically modified organisms. I fear I may be back to square one.
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