Arthur Schopenhauer was the first to explicitly ask the question, [1] in an essay entitled "Character". James Taylor has been the voice of baby boomers since the early 1970s when he began chronicling his struggles with life, love, and loss in hits such as Fire and Rain, You’ve Got a Friend and Sweet Baby James. While council resolutions are legally binding, assembly resolutions are not though they are an important barometer of world opinion. Travel Puzzles: Assemble colorful blocks of different shapes and unravel the captured photo underneath. According to base pairing rules (A with T, and C with G), hydrogen bonds bind the nitrogenous bases of the two separate polynucleotide strands to make double-stranded DNA.

The two possibilities are, life is either a meaningless accident arising from the laws of physics operating in a meaningless universe, or it is a step in a planned ‘experiment’. If, as many physicists now believe, the universe is only information, then harnessing all the resources of the universe in one giant evolutionary process could plausibly provide a useful outcome for a species clever enough to create the universe in the first place.

Biologists generally agree that lifeforms are self-organizing systems which regulate their internal environments as to maintain this organized state, metabolism serves to provide energy, and reproduction causes life to continue over a span of multiple generations. Many-worlds theories claim that every possibility of quantum mechanics is played out in parallel universes. For example, one interpretation is that the Big Bang occurred coincidentally, and when considering the anthropic principle, it is sometimes interpreted as implying the existence of a multiverse. Cell signalling coordinates cellular activities, and hence governs the basic functions of multicellular organisms. A recent trend has been models of the creation of 'baby universes' inside black holes, with our own Big Bang being a white hole on the inside of a black hole in another parent universe.

Herbert Copeland classified the Fungi in his Protoctista, including them with single-celled organisms and thus partially avoiding the problem but acknowledging their special status. I’m not meaning to sound like a Pollyanna – I assure you I’m not – it’s just more pleasant to strive for a modicum of equilibrium. Another way of putting this is to define life as "a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution", a definition adopted by a NASA committee attempting to define life for the purposes of exobiology, based on a suggestion by Carl Sagan. Epicurus, a pupil of the Platonist Pamphilus of Samos, taught that the greatest good is in seeking modest pleasures, to attain tranquility and freedom from fear ( ataraxia) via knowledge, friendship, and virtuous, temperate living; bodily pain ( aponia) is absent through one's knowledge of the workings of the world and of the limits of one's desires. This makes me feel two things about my life: it’s a dot because the cosmos is immense; but it’s an important dot in the cosmos because I can consider it.

Meaning becomes difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if these needs are insufficiently satisfied. Small red dwarfs have the opposite problem, with a smaller habitable zone that is subject to higher levels of magnetic activity and the effects of tidal locking from close orbits. However, current physics can only describe the early universe from around 10 −43 seconds after the Big Bang (where zero time corresponds to infinite temperature); a theory of quantum gravity would be required to understand events before that time. Some of the earliest theories of life were materialist, holding that all that exists is matter, and that life is merely a complex form or arrangement of matter. Since a man does not alter, and his moral character remains absolutely the same all through his life; since he must play out the part which he has received, without the least deviation from the character; since neither experience, nor philosophy, nor religion can effect any improvement in him, the question arises, What is the meaning of life at all?

This involves achieving eudaemonia, usually translated as "happiness", "well-being", "flourishing", and "excellence".Under test conditions, life forms have been observed to thrive in the near-weightlessness of space [101] [102] and to survive in the vacuum of space. Science also studies and can provide recommendations for the pursuit of well-being and a related conception of morality. Organisms exist in every part of the biosphere, including soil, hot springs, inside rocks at least 19km (12mi) deep underground, the deepest parts of the ocean, and at least 64km (40mi) high in the atmosphere.

This specialisation allows multicellular organisms to exploit resources more efficiently than single cells. From a physics perspective, an organism is a thermodynamic system with an organised molecular structure that can reproduce itself and evolve as survival dictates. Their DNA is the shape of a circle, inside the cytoplasm, and they have no membranes inside the cell. Expeditions of the International Ocean Discovery Program found unicellular life in 120°C sediment 1. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell that toll includes over 3,400 children killed and more than 6,300 injured.Thus, a sense of significance permeates every dimension of meaning, rather than standing as a separate factor. So our natural intuitions determine the meaning of life for us; and it seems for other species as well, for those intuitions resonate through much of life and give it its purpose. Main article: Death Animal corpses, like this African buffalo, are recycled by the ecosystem, providing energy and nutrients for living organisms. Therefore, even by an organism satisfying its desire, it makes the continuing satisfaction of its desires ever more difficult to achieve.