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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.

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    This is probably not what you are looking for, but it came to mind: do you know that "game of life" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life2012-06-12
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    Should I delete this question or change this to a community wiki? I'm new to this site so any corrections are welcome.2012-06-12
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    Actually having had a look at my own link this might be pretty close to the best you can hope for...2012-06-12
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    @SimonMarkett Yes, I heard of it before. I think the game of life partially answers the question. It has simple rules and various patterns emerging from the rules, some even reproducing another patterns!2012-06-12
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    @JineonBaek: You should probably read the book [Gödel, Escher, Bach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) by Douglas Hofstadter. It attempts to explain consciousness by (among other things) examining self-referentiality in formal systems.2012-06-12
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    @SimonMarkett However I think it is not easy to describe how the life is emerged with the game of life. The patterns are designed carefully, and it seems hard to make them spontaneously from some initial state.2012-06-12
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    @DejanGovc I knew the title, but didn't know of its content! Thanks for pointing me out the book.2012-06-12
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    I would just refer to to the second law of thermodynamics, don't think there is any firm theory above that by now --- otherwise it would be too hilarious for everyone to keep silent about that. Maybe someone will provide some references, probably to Prigogine's works, at least I'll try to find them.2012-06-12

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