In life thermodynamics, living being is an abstract term often used to define a person, animal, or other life form, in the sense of it functioning as a “being”. In 1969, on the topic of Maxwell’s demon, to cite one example, American chemical engineer Hendrick van Ness, asks:


His answer is that it is not necessary; moreover, it is not even advantageous. [1] A near synonym to living being is “living organism”, albeit without the “being” connotation, which seems to carry with it certain anthropomorphic speculations or philosophical issues.

Translational effect?
The term living being seems to originate often in translations to English; e.g. French to English or Russian to English. [2] To cite an example of this translation effect, in 2000, Indian science philosopher Srdan Lelas first quotes from Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger’s 1944 What is Life? (pg. 69): “The living organism seems to be a macroscopic system which in part of its behavior approaches to that purely mechanical (as contrasted with thermodynamical) conduct to which all systems tend, as the temperature approaches the absolute zero and the molecular disorder is removed.” Then, however, Lelas restates this, on the logic that “the challenge of being a living being is much more demanding than the challenge of being a refrigerator”, as such: “What Schrodinger is pointing to here is the bearing of the entropy principle, or the second law of thermodynamics, on the characterization of living beings.” [3]

References
1. Van Ness, Hendrick C. (1969). Understanding Thermodynamics (keywork: living being, pg. 84). Dover.
2. (a) Gladyshev, Georgi. (1997). Thermodynamic Theory of the Evolution of Living Beings. Nova Science Publisher.
(b) (a) Gilles, Nibart and Vincent, Louis-Marie. (2002). Identity of Living or Other Logic of Living (L'Identitie du Vivant ou une Autre Logique du Vivant). Publisher.
(c) Book: Identity of Living or Other Logic of Living (French → English).
3. Lelas, Srdan. (2002). Science and Modernity: Toward an Integral theory of Science (ch. 5: Life, pgs. 64-77, esp. pg. 70). Springer (2000, first ed.?).

Further reading
● Laurance, Jeremy. (2008). “A Clump of Cells? Or a Living Being with a Soul?”, The Independent: Science, 26 March.