RNA WORLD
44 LIFE FROM AN RNA WORLD
What is life?
A further note on the nature definition of life put forth in this chapter: this point of view suggests that „following the water” or „following the energy” or other NASA-approved ways of stalking new life may be immediate use, but such an approach could prove blinked in the end. The essence of life descent with modifiation. And furthermore, this quality is self-selecting in that it allows life to survive teh general decline of its vicinity by making more of itself. Thinking in this way, replication is life’s ulitamte chemical and physical survival strategy. There may be life, tehrefore, without water or any other familiar chemical sign. When we follow water, we will automacially be led to watery life, and we will be tempted to read thsi as confirmation that all life is like us. But this can easy be an error. This erro potentially becomes more onerous as we more to simpler living things, who need only met the most basic requirements, and as we move to alien ebvironments, where our chemical instructions will be mistaken.
overall, the universe declines as mandated by the law. but life finds a bright local eexception yo general chemical decline in the replicator and its descendant genetic texts.