• Question: hi my names Eva and I would like to know what the meaning of life is?

    Asked by evabezz123 to Ed, Hayley, Jason, Nathan, Sophie on 9 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Sophie Holles

      Sophie Holles answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      There is no definitive answer! I think you have to work out your own meaning because everyone is different so different things fulfill different people. Life is what you make of it. In terms of biology.. I think life means change, living things change all the time. How do you define something that’s changing?

    • Photo: Hayley Evers-King

      Hayley Evers-King answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      Hi Eva, a cool question! We actually looked at this in a recent course I did on philosophy and came up with a lot of different answers. We agreed with Sophie that life can have different meanings for different people – if you mean what is our purpose or what should we do with our lives.

      In a biological sense, I’ve always liked the MRS NERG description I learnt at school (Movement, Reproduction, Sensitivity Nutrition, Energy, Respiration, Growth), but even this is not quite perfect – some animal hybrids can’t reproduce, but if we saw one (a mule for example) we would definitely say it was alive.

      This is a really important question though, particularly I think if we want to look for life in space. Maybe life out there will be very different from that on Earth, so how will we know if we find it?

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