Abstract
IN a recent article1, Dr. Ponnamperuma arrives at the conclusion that “life is only a special and complicated property of matter and au fond there is no difference between a living organism and lifeless matter”. For many years the evidence has been strongly in favour of this view and, in any event, experience in every field of science suggests powerfully that Nature is a unity which can be divided into categories for Human convenience, but that we must never lose sight of the fact that the boundaries so introduced are man-made and possess no counterparts in reality; it was to be expected, therefore, that the division of matter into living and dead forms would ultimately be revealed as an artificial one, convenient for distinguishing extreme cases such as man and rock, but quite inappropriate when consideration is being given to intermediate forms such as the virus and the newly dead. Nature appears to satisfy a principle of continuity, so that the marking of dividing lines on her fabric may throw into relief some features of the pattern, but it inevitably distorts the reality.
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References
Ponnamperuma, C., Nature, 201, 337 (1964).
De Chardin, T., The Phenomenon of Man (Collins, 1960).
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LAWDEN, D. Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life. Nature 202, 412 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/202412a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/202412a0
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