Proposed definitions of life include

Proposed definitions of life include:

1. Living things are systems that tend to respond to changes in their environment, and inside themselves, in such a way as to promote their own continuation.

2. Life (a living individual) is defined as a network of inferior negative feedbacks (regulatory mechanisms) subordinated to a superior positive feedback (potential of expansion, reproduction).

3. Life is a characteristic of self-organizing, self-recycling systems consisting of populations of replicators that are capable of mutation, around most of which homeostatic, metabolizing organisms evolve.

4. Type of organization of matter producing various interacting forms of variable complexity, whose main property is to replicate almost perfectly by using matter and energy available in their environment to which they may adapt. In this definition "almost perfectly" relates to mutations happening during replication of organisms that may have adaptive benefits.

5. Life is a potentially self-perpetuating open system of linked organic reactions, catalyzed simultaneously and almost isothermally by complex chemicals (enzymes) that are themselves produced by the open system.