If we think about structure and space in different ways than we are accustomed to, we start to see that structures that we previously regarded as inanimate actually do have degrees of life. In fact there is not a clear distinction between things that are alive and things that are not alive. It is actually more of a continuum.
Life has particular qualities:
- It can be recognized and felt
- Every structure has degrees of life, more or less
- It is profoundly related to a sense of wholeness
- There is a deeply personal aspect of life, it touches us personally
- Pervasive, including not simply biological organisms but stones, concrete, posts
Each stone, rafter, and piece of concrete has some degree of life. The particular degree of life which occurs in organisms will then be seen as merely a special case of a broader conception of life. Although this may sound absurd to ears trained in the last few decades of scientific orthodoxy, I shall try to show that this conception is more profound scientifically, that it has a solid basis in mathematical and physical understanding of space, and above all that it does provide us with a single coherent conception of the world, and of what we are doing in the world, when we try to make the world “alive.”
SOURCE The Nature of Order, Book One, The Phenomenon of Life page 31
SEE ALSO
The feeling of life in a particular locality: What Makes a Place Feel Alive?
