What is "Life"?

This month will be another themed set of topics, revolving around Biology. These meetings will be co-moderated by our resident Biology expert Ryan McKenna and the topics will run roughly this-a-way:

Science Week: "Biology's Identity Crisis", a discussion of the "species" concept and, more generally, methods of biological diversification.

Philosophy Week: "What is 'Life'?" A discussion of the "essence", if such there be, of the category term "life" that some of us use some of the time.

Pushing the Envelope Week: "The Gaea Hypothesis", considering the entire biosphere, "mother nature" herself, as an organism, a "life form". Are there good reasons to do so? What might that entail?

Text Week: "What is Life" by Erwin Schrodinger.

A PDF copy can be found here. (http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf)

There appear to be some odd typos near the beginning which get much more rare after page 1. I don't know what that is about.