Re: a definition of "living being"

Hmm... dont know about that. The car maker would be happy to hear you 
saying that they're equated to living organisms (:

I think for something to be a 'living being' then it has to have a 
metabolism (and yes, I dont regard viruses as 'living organisms'). But I 
dont know your acronym!

Actually, a quite google search revealed this:

"We have seen scientific definitions of life spanning
 quite a broad range. That 'subtle combination of
 properties' has included structural features, growth,
 reproduction, metabolism, motion, response to stimuli,
 evolvability, information content and transfer, and
 control of energy flow. Obviously, the word has
 different connotations to different individuals. This
 will lead to confusion and disagreement unless the
 term "life", as suggested earlier by Dr. Marquand, is
 avoided by any discussion of "borderline systems".
 Leslie Orgel has coined the acronym CITROENS (Complex
 Information-Transforming Reproducing Objects that
 Evolve by Natural Selection (26) to describe certain
 of these borderline systems."

That was from this page:

http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/potter_life.html


However, I dont think that the acronym is supposed to be an 
all-encompassing definition of 'life'.


Bye,

Scott.


Emiliano wrote:

> dear friends,
> my name is Emiliano and I need a help about an issue:
> in order to find a suitable definition of "living being", it came back
> to my mind something that I heard when I was at school, years ago. The
> memory is quite blurred, now, but it sounded something like
> c.i.t.r.o.e.n.s. (an acronymus meaning the list of features that
> define a living organismus).
> If somebody can help me with that, it would be a great help for me.
> My best regards,
> Emiliano