Sunday, September 09, 2007
Random Neuron Firings
John Wilkins has an interesting, and typically informative, post on the definition of "life," which is no simple problem. One (though perhaps not defining) aspect of life is metabolism -- the use of free (in the sense of "available") energy to reduce local entropy. Um ... living things eat.
A phrase John used struck me as potentially representing one of those small sayings that seem to capture large truths in one bite. Here is how I rendered it:
The purpose of life is to ensure that entropy is increased somewhere else.