What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life
2025/05/19 by Reed Bender, Bender, Reed, Karina Kofman +5 · 12 voices · 1 citation
#q-bio.OT #cs.AI #cs.CY #q-bio.BM #q-bio.CB #q-bio.SC #stat.AP
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.15849
Abstract
The question of "what is life?" has challenged scientists and philosophers for centuries, producing an array of definitions that reflect both the mystery of its emergence and the diversity of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear on the question. Despite significant progress in our understanding of biological systems, psychology, computation, and information theory, no single definition for life has yet achieved universal acceptance. This challenge becomes increasingly urgent as advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and astrobiology challenge our traditional conceptions of what it means to be alive. We undertook a methodological approach that leverages large language models (LLMs) to analyze a set of definitions of life provided by a curated set of cross-disciplinary experts. We used a novel pairwise correlation analysis to map the definitions into distinct feature vectors, followed by agglomerative clustering, intra-cluster semantic analysis, and t-SNE projection to reveal underlying conceptual archetypes. This methodology revealed a continuous landscape of the themes relating to the definition of life, suggesting that what has historically been approached as a binary taxonomic problem should be instead conceived as differentiated perspectives within a unified conceptual latent space. We offer a new methodological bridge between reductionist and holistic approaches to fundamental questions in science and philosophy, demonstrating how computational semantic analysis can reveal conceptual patterns across disciplinary boundaries, and opening similar pathways for addressing other contested definitional territories across the sciences.
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Discussions
- New preprint! arxiv.org/abs/2505.15849 : Reed Bender (www.linkedin.com/in/reed-bend...), Karina Kofman (www.linkedin.com/in/karina-ko...), @blaiseaguera.bsky.social "What Lives? A meta-analysis of div [bsky, 50 points, 1 comments]
- Titanic& super important work from @drmichaellevin Lab "What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life I’m on the dynamic and relational process side close to self-sustainin [bsky, 23 points, 2 comments]
- What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life arxiv.org/abs/2505.15849 [bsky, 6 points, 0 comments]
- "What is life?" New study uses LLMs analyzing expert definitions shows continuous themes: life isn't a binary but a spectrum of perspectives. A computational bridge across disciplines! #WhatIsLife #Sc [bsky, 6 points, 0 comments]
- What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life arxiv.org/abs/2505.15849 [bsky, 4 points, 1 comments]
- Or maybe: alive how? Check out the preprint at the link below: arxiv.org/abs/2505.15849 [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
- What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life [hn, 3 points, 0 comments]
- Speaking of @carlzimmer.com, this preprint applies semantic analysis to 68 expert definitions of "life", wh/immediately made me think of his book, "Life's Edge" arxiv.org/pdf/2505.15849 I think maybe [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
- "The question of "what is life?" has challenged scientists and philosophers for centuries, producing an array of definitions that reflect both the mystery of its emergence and the diversity of discipl [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- Strictly speaking, the term "synthetic" means something made of artificial material, from scratch. I don't think a naturaly produced carbon-based bacterium with a modified DNA fits the description. Ne [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- Reed Bender, Karina Kofman, Blaise Ag\"uera y Arcas, Michael Levin: What Lives? A meta-analysis of diverse opinions on the definition of life https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15849 https://arxiv.org/pdf/250 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
- This article is interesting not only for its AI approach, but for its historical review together with the modern conceptions of life. Life stubbornly resists definition. Why is that? arxiv.org/abs/250 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
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