What is Life?

Movement is life. Life is ubiquitous since everything is in motion (yet in stark defiance of the fact that the present is an immeasurably fine point that can not comprehensibly exist, neither the future nor the past exist, thus negating time, motion and causation). And so, proceeding on that assumption and disregarding philosophical objections to motion in general we become aware of the mechanics of motion whereby life emerges from the simple, continual confrontation with a binary question.

At all moments and on myriad levels there is a question being asked and answered between opposing forces; “what is the path of least resistance”. All activity precedes precisely and reliably along these paths of optimal flow in accord with local gradients. Beginning at the most basic levels and then scaling in complexity even to a level that one would recognize in the eternal dissatisfaction of conscious beings who at all moments, because of a highly developed nervous system, will be aware of being too cold, too hot, too hungry, too thirsty ad infinitum. The eternal question seeks its answer as to the path of least resistance and manifests as an imperative to satisfy biological desire. 

As environmental facts change so does the suite of questioning and thus automatically and with ease and economy of motion the DNA molecule, genetic dynamics, evolution under natural selection and the neurologically sophisticated creature within it’s elaborate extended phenotype, advance- perhaps even on to the destinies of “artificial” life which we now recognize as being actual life with it’s own peculiar dissatisfactions (and no overt “competitive” paradigm is required”).