"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...

"BAC" wrote in message
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"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
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"Kay" wrote in message
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In article , Franz Heymann
writes

"Kay" wrote in message
...

And no 2 is an interesting one ... where do we draw the line
..
how
do
we regard viruses, compared with plants, animals, fungi,
bacteria
...

That's a good question. I tnd to tink of anything which
replicates
itself as being in some sense alive, but that may well be
wrong.

Computer worm?

Touche


It's not so far fetched - this Universe seems to like patterns -
perhaps
life is simply another way of creating and maintaining patterns.
Ideas which
are able to perpetuate and defend themselves (e.g. religions) via
their
hosts could be argued to possess a form of 'life' too?

Shades of Dawkins' memes/genes ?


Sometimes known as 'Dawkin's Bad Idea', because the metaphor is dismissed as
simplistic - memes or ideas lack the internal set of instructions to
replicate themselves. But maybe they do have them, and we simply cannot
perceive them as such.