• Question: what is the meaning of life??

    Asked by cibul to Hywel, Joseph, Patience, Poonam, Rachael on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      That’s a very difficult question to answer. I think it’s something that you have to decide for yourself – it’s your life and you should choose what to do with it. Whatever you do though, I think you should try to be happy.

      If you read ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ you’ll find that the answer is 42.

    • Photo: Dr Hywel Jones

      Dr Hywel Jones answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      42

    • Photo: Poonam Kaushik

      Poonam Kaushik answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      BIOLOGICALLY, Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive, where life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit all or most of the following phenomena:

      1) Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
      2) Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
      3) Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
      4) Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
      5) Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism’s heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
      6) Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and by chemotaxis.
      7) Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

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