What separates a living thing from a non-living thing?

Question

What is life? Do you think that living things are wholey physical things, just chemical reactions? Is life something that can be completly understood using the laws of physics and chemistry or is there more to living things? Do you think there is something like a vital force or a soul that separates living things from non-living things? Is it possible that even if we knew everything there is to know about the physical and chemical nature of life forms that we would still need something like a vital force to fully describe and understand them?

Answer 1

Life itself is a set of processes that are carried out by an organism causing it to survive.

In metaphysics an organism possesses life during the period between an organism's acquisition of a spirit, upon Fertilisation, until its spirit's terminal evacuation, upon death.scientists generally accept that the biological manifestation of life exhibits the following phenomena:

Organization - Living things are composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
Metabolism - Metabolism produces energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
Growth - Growth results from a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
Adaptation - Adaptation is the accommodation of a living organism to its environment. It 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.
Response to stimuli - A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion: the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
Reproduction - The division of one cell to form two new cells is reproduction. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

Answer 2

Living thing from a non living thing. The pencil has carbon in it , so do we. But the pencil is a non-living thing while we are not.
All living things are made of atoms and so are non-living things too! Life takes birth in the arrangement of atoms. A particular arrangement of atoms can lead to the formation of organelles that eventually make a cell. Thus i would say the arrangement of atoms is the key which imparts living characteristics to us and not to a pencil

Answer 3

Well there are definite differences between nonliving and living things, even dead and the living. It's possible to have nonliving life though to. Thats the whole thing religion is for, something gave something life and I personally don't believe scientists can artificially create this. Its all up to your beliefs!

Answer 4

Irritabilty

Answer 5

SOUL. that's what non living things lack.