C’EST LA VIE.

I tried to post this note on the Russian Literary Sites three times, but the system here is so smart and so “xenophobic” that it obviously takes the simplest French saying as a call for a coup in France, Russia, Bangladesh and Guadeloupe, and therefore rejected my “French” name from the doorstep.

I had to give in and name the note in Russian.

What fun!

WHAT IS “LIFE”???

I was looking for an article on a certain topic in the Encyclopedia Britannica and accidentally opened volume VI of the Micropedia on page 212, where it was labeled “LIFE”, that is, “Life”.

Not so long ago, I wrote a note about “Human self-determination.” And about life: “Life is a way.”

But, I admit, I have NEVER seen SUCH an article about life as in the Encyclopedia Britannica!

Read the Encyclopedias, Ladies and Gentlemen!

So, there is only one sentence in this article!!!

«LIFE – a phenomenon almost impossible to define or to explain in all its varying aspects».

After this amazing phrase, there is immediately a link in the tenth volume of the Macropedia, in which a whole sheet is devoted to the definition of “life”!

There are MANY definitions: Physiological, metabolic, biochemical, genetic, thermodynamic!

But this is Britannica, of “capitalist imperialists”. Intellectual impotents!

And how do the Soviet encyclopedias define it, our life on planet Earth?

They are the Marxist-Engelist-Leninist-Stalinist faithful and therefore invincible!

I looked into them too. It’s not impotent bourgeoisie who write there, but real Soviet scientists, armed to the teeth with «something»! With a powerful Soviet scientific potential!

Even funnier!

In their opinion, life is a form of existence of matter!!! Or the form of motion of matter!!! The second phrase usually quotes Engels’ cretinous definition as “the way protein bodies exist.»

This means that life, like space and time, is also a form of existence of matter.

And what is a “shovel”? After all, this is also a form of existence of matter, even two: wood and iron. And if it’s madewith addition of durable plastic, then as many as three! Polymers!

These “definitions” got me excited, and I decided to also make my modest contribution to defining such a small thing – you’d think there was some kind of swarm of something on a rundown planet in the system of a rundown star, hanging out somewhere in the back of a rundown galaxy among hundreds of billions of other rundown stars and the same number of galaxies… Zilch, nonsense!

So it will be allowed to Esprit de L’Escallier to try to define such a microparticle in the universe.

I thought about it and decided that I needed to find a radical difference between dead matter and life.

I figured it out – metabolism, exchange of the matter with the environment.

Yes, but there is plenty of this in the inanimate nature. Is the water evaporating from the sea? It’s evaporating! It rises into the atmosphere. It condenses there and pours back into the sea through rain, snow, or rivers. An exchange?

Does the sand get wet in the rain? It gets wet And dries out under the rays of the sun. Sharing with the environment? Exchange.

So the exchange is not suitable.

Ah, the brilliant idea is – reproduction! (I can say without false modesty that whatever idea I have, it’s brilliant!)

And what is reproduction? This is an increase in a certain amount. So the appearance of many water droplets in the clouds is reproduction? And an avalanche in the mountains, from one small lump of snow, a whole mountain of snow flies down. Is this not reproduction? Is crystal growth in a supersaturated solution not reproduction? And the chain reaction in an atomic or hydrogen bomb is not reproduction? Even the reactors are called that: Breeder Reactor.

In German: Vervielfältigung Reactor . Look, how clever and sophisticated!

And a fire in the forest or steppe, arising from a small single cigarette butt, is not reproduction? And chemical chain reactions are not reproduction? And polimerisaion? And the photomultiplier?

I was sad, how could I define her sweet, damn life?

And suddenly a thought occurred to me. This time, alas, not a genius, but an ordinary, sober one.

Everything that happens in inanimate nature is the exchange and transfer of MASS – ENERGY.

And life is a purely Material embodiment of the exchange and passing on of the purely Immaterial: Ideas, Information, Code!

Faciant meliora potentes.

Let whoever can do better.

17 I 2017