Disadvantages of Four Root Property Definitions

Four Root Property Definitions are the Theories of Life as Metabolism, Supple Adaptation, Information and the Here- dity.

The Theory of Life as Metabolism. The Theory of Life as Metabolism considers the continuous process of meta- bolism of material and energy as the basic property of life. Erwin Schrödinger developed the Theory of Life as Metabolism and created the theory of negative entropy in his book What Is Life, “Thus a living organism continually increases its entropy.” “It can only keep aloof from it, i.e. alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy” (Schrödinger, 1992). This opinion is continued by the Theory of Dissipative Structure.

These theories are not right. Although every kind of life is a self-organizational system and a dissipative structure, not all self-organizational systems and dissipative structures are lives. Some non-living things, like laser and internal combustion engine, are capable of self-organization, drawing negative entropy and dissi- pating it, too. So self-organization, drawing negative entropy and dissipation are not sufficient conditions of life.

The essential property of life must be possessed by all creatures, and must not be possessed by any non-living things. If the requirement is relaxed, we can list many properties of life to fit. For example, each life must be matter, and what is not matter is not life obviously.

The Theory of Life as Supple Adaptation. The Theory of Life as Supple Adaptation is provided by Mark A. Bedau at the Reed College in America. He supposed the definition of life as following：

“X is living iff

“X is a supplely adapting system, or

“X is explained in a right way by a supplely adapting system” (Bedau, 1998).

The standard in this theory to decide if a system is supplely adapting or not is not clear. Many non-living things are able to change variously, like river, cloud and sand hill. They can also be regarded as supple adaptation. It is not clear, either, that whether dead creatures and extinct creatures are supplely adapting systems.

What is more, the ability to supplely adapt is a result instead of reason. The ability of supple adaptation of life mainly comes from its enormously complex structure. It will be explained in this article that inheritance is the sufficient and necessary condition for life to maintain the complex structure. Breeding, therefore, is the sufficient and necessary condition of the ability of supple adaptation. Bedau did not point out the relation between breeding and supple adaptation.

The Theory of Life as Information. Jianhui Li claimed that the Theory of Life as Information pay attention to the delivery of information in the process of growth and breeding of life. An entity is life if it has the ability of self-reproduction or breeding in style of Von Neumann(Li, 2002, p37). This definition is right if the word “delivery of information” means self-reproduction or breeding. But Jianhui Li did not emphasize the special way of the delivery of information in life. Nor did he criticize teleology by the theory of breeding.