ReviewLife (Basel, Switzerland)2011
Is life unique?
Review in Life (Basel, Switzerland), 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Life - A glimpse into the phenomenon.Bioinformation · 2026Article
- Statistics is not measurement: The inbuilt semantics of psychometric scales and language-based models obscures crucial epistemic differences.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- A self-sustaining serpentinization mega-engine feeds the fougerite nanoengines implicated in the emergence of guided metabolism.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Homeostatic medicine: a strategy for exploring health and disease.Current medicine (Cham, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- What is life?Molecular biology reports · 2021Article
- Molecules, Information and the Origin of Life: What Is Next?Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Systems protobiology: origin of life in lipid catalytic networks.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2018Review
- Redundancy of the genetic code enables translational pausing.Frontiers in genetics · 2014Review
- Life's Order, Complexity, Organization, and Its Thermodynamic-Holistic Imperatives.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Is life physicochemically unique? No. Is life unique? Yes. Life manifests innumerable formalisms that cannot be generated or explained by physicodynamics alone. Life pursues thousands of biofunctional goals, not the least of which is staying alive. Neither physicodynamics, nor evolution, pursue goals. Life is largely directed by linear digital programming and by the Prescriptive Information (PI) instantiated particularly into physicodynamically indeterminate nucleotide sequencing. Epigenomic controls only compound the sophistication of these formalisms. Life employs representationalism through the use of symbol systems. Life manifests autonomy, homeostasis far from equilibrium in the harshest of environments, positive and negative feedback mechanisms, prevention and correction of its own errors, and organization of its components into Sustained Functional Systems (SFS). Chance and necessity-heat agitation and the cause-and-effect determinism of nature's orderliness-cannot spawn formalisms such as mathematics, language, symbol systems, coding, decoding, logic, organization (not to be confused with mere self-ordering), integration of circuits, computational success, and the pursuit of functionality. All of these characteristics of life are formal, not physical.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.