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The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers. [2] [3] [4] This is partially because life is a process, not a substance. [5] [6] [7] This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside Earth.
Life on Earth, which emerged more than 3.7 billion years ago, [10] is immensely diverse. Biologists have sought to study and classify the various forms of life, from prokaryotic organisms such as archaea and bacteria to eukaryotic organisms such as protists, fungi, plants, and animals.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
Living systems. Living systems are life forms (or, more colloquially known as living things) treated as a system. They are said to be open self-organizing and said to interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter. Multiple theories of living systems have been proposed.
Biological organisation is the organisation of complex biological structures and systems that define life using a reductionistic approach. [1] The traditional hierarchy, as detailed below, extends from atoms to biospheres. The higher levels of this scheme are often referred to as an ecological organisation concept, or as the field, hierarchical ...
The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor, conceptual model, and research tool used to explore the evolution of life and describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin 's On the Origin of Species (1859). [1]
Lifestyle (social sciences) Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. [ 1 ][ 2 ] The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, The Case of Miss R., with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". [ 3 ...
The seven capital virtues or seven lively virtues (also known as the contrary or remedial virtues) [8] are those thought to stand in opposition to the seven capital vices (or deadly sins). Prudentius , writing in the 5th century, was the first author to allegorically represent Christian morality as a struggle between seven sins and seven virtues.