Fireatwill

Even what we might consider as supernatural is natural, its simply that we don't know why it happens.

Dreams are a good example, we still don't know why we dream.

Piscator

I'm willing to help with the experiment if you and Katie agree.

Carl Noreen

@Fireatwill (who is Will, and why do you want to fire at him? J/K) The op asks is life a supernatural phenomenom, so I think IF there is a supernatural, then there must also be a sub natural as opposed to the natural. If one is a materialist then (naturally) one would not like to think of questions that might involve differentiations such as sub and supernatural.

In saying, there is one nature and that is everything, then certainly you cannot mean that a computer is a natural product of natural processes, since a computer does not occur in nature it is an artifice, a manufactured product.

Or possibly you might mean that a computer is natural since it is composed of elements that appear on the periodic table and in such a case a Davincvi painting is as natural as a lake, or that a symphony is as natural as a thunderstorm. By the same token then a plastic bag would be as natural as a river and an assault rifle would be no different than a daisy.

AlpinLuke

I would start from a curious approach: if we imagine life as a "force", we have to think to it as an expression of energy. Energy which transmits itself through time and space.

To do what?

Observation is a simple way to understand what something is. How does the universe evolve? Towards an increasing state of entropy ["disorder" to make it simple]. Which factor, entity, agent ... acts in the universe to "organize" this entropy?

It seems that life opposes entropy.

Our bodies age because of entropy. The ending sections of the DNA lose something during the process of copy, from a generation to an other of cells. These little "mistakes" damage our organisms while we age, until we die. But before we die we find a way to reproduce and reproducing ourselves we reduce the entropy of our biological system, giving life to young individuals in which the genetic entropy is well inferior to the one present in the parents.

Life opposes the natural entropy of the universe [we are already thinking to find a way to leave this solar system before that our sun, in 5 billions of year, will destroy the earth ...], but life is totally natural, actually nature is life.

Life is probably the most natural thing ever.

Piscator

Good point. As far as I know, there has been only one event that would qualify as the beginning of life, and that is on this planet some billions of years ago. All evolution on this earth seems to stem from that one event. It has never been repeated, so far as I know. It seems to be a very unique event.

Earl_of_Rochester

Spoken like a true scientist

I suppose the main question would be, what makes the chemicals react to process life? It may be down to a chance mutation and this is simply where we ended up - the end result of a random mistake. It took the best part of 4 billion years (ish) for it to happen so it didn't happen overnight.

That's also plenty of time to explore all the avenues which didn't work. Apparently something like 99.9% of all the species which have ever lived are now extinct. Our world is rather good at sustaining life but it's even better at destroying it.

Piscator

If life is energy, then it seems to be very different from other forms of energy. As I said in my post above,"... life seems to me to be a unique force.
There is a law of physics that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed from one state to another. Heat energy can be converted to kinetic energy, for instance.

But life seems an entirely unique energy, if it is a form of energy at all. Life can't be transformed into any other kind of energy, can it?"

Piscator

I tend to agree, Fire. But it's easy to drift into semantics on this topic. Let's say if we were able to find out there is an unbelievably intelligent god that creates, maintains and destroys the universe. Would you consider that god to be natural? I would. I see no need for the word "supernatural" except to describe our imaginings that don't exist in reality.

I started this thread because I see life as a very unique entity. A very, very common phenomenon that is essential to our existence but invisible and inexplicable even after all these years. I see it as the closest thing to something that might be "beyond energy".

Brisieis

Life is definitely a phenomenom, whether it is supernatural or not is a different question.

Fireatwill

Carl, philosophizing about nature went out of fashion in the time of Newton!

Now we have Quantum physics and nature is firmly in the realm of science.