Biology is defined as "the scientific study of life" so an obvious question is- "What is life?"
In most cases if we want to know the definition of a word we would turn to a dictionary. Unfortunately, the typical definition is not too helpful.
Life- The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter.
It turns out that actually defining life is more difficult than you might have originally have thought, so it is a concept that definitely deserves a little more thought.
Reading
Origin and Definition of Life from PhysicalGeography.net by Michael Pidwirny
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9a.html
Expected Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course a fully engaged student should be able to
- discss the difficulties in easily defining life
- develop their own definition of life and be able to defend why they chose that definition.
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