Life: An emergent property that passively qualifies matter or a purposive agency that actively controls matter?
Yunus A. Çengel
Abstract:Despite its abundance, life continues to be a mind-boggling mystery. Physical entities are made of matter-energy, and thus they are ontologically objective. The properties that emerge on a physical entity and characterize it are ontologically subjective and thus nonphysical. Emergent properties routinely appear on physical entities during assembly out of nowhere and disappear during disassembly. We can engineer the manifestation of desired properties by manipulating matter, but we seem to have no control over … Show more
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