I recently started to have interest in the characteristics of life. Especially, I wonder if there are some kind of mathematical description of the true meaning of life and how it is emerged. Why does self-reproducing structures appears, trying to retain itself in the world governed by physical and chemical laws? The laws seems mathematical to me. So I thought there might be some formulation of the characteristics of life in a way
I know that the question may be ill-defined, naive or off-topic in mathematics. However, I'm really curious if there were any attempts to describe or define clearly any properties in living objects using pure mathematics. Are there any?
Edit: I found some discussion made in Timothy Gowers's Weblog. The book What is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, although I don't know much, also seems to describe this matter.