What Is Life?

An intensive course at Ormond College, 2017

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Report

• Report to Ormond College on intensive teaching methods

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Starting points

• Goals

• Reading

• Homobiota

• Course mascot

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Life Beyond Earth

The book by Feinberg and Shapiro, and related things

• Earthlife

• Life - F+S

• Life Beyond Earth

• Mars

• Titan

• Neutron Stars

• Cosmic Clouds

• The Sun

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The Fermi Paradox

Estimating the number of aliens civilisations/biospheres, and trying to work out why we haven't been contacted

• Drake's equation

• The Fermi Paradox

• Our brilliant, possibly original solution to the Fermi Paradox

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Broader Philosophy of Science

• Sociology of Science

• Issues of Scale in the Emergence of Life

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The Extended Phenotype

Does Richard Dawkins have a definition of replicator that's so general that it can be used to define life?

• Various topics that lead up to our reading of The Extended Phenotype

• The active germ-line replicator

• Are memes (in Dawkins's sense) alive?

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Other Readings

• Ball and Brindley on the origin of life on Earth, 2017

• Wang's Carpets by Greg Egan

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Conclusion

• Proposed definition of life

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Coordinator: Jason Grossman, GEM Scott Fellow, Ormond College; this web site produced by Jason Grossman, Ciara Hart, Esther Cowen and Ada Quinn