In nature, laws of life are hypothetical universal laws said to govern the operation of every living object or life-like entity.
Overview
In 1869, French philosopher Hippolyte Taine, in the preface to his 1869 two volume book On Intelligence, stated: [1]
“It is now admitted that the laws which rule formation, nutrition, locomotion, for bird or reptile, are but one example and application of more general laws which rule the formation, nutrition, locomotion, of every animal. The same way we begin to admit that the laws which rule the development of religious conceptions, literary creations, scientific discoveries, in a nation, are only an application and example of laws that rule this same development at every moment and with all men.”
In modern terms, its generally agreed that one of the core laws of life, is the conservation of energy or the first law of thermodynamics. However, experience has shown that not all processes that satisfy the conservation of energy are possible. Real processes must also satisfy both the second and the third laws of thermodynamics. Life, sub-bacterial, microbial, plant, animal, and human, then, are processes governed by these laws. In the 2001 words of American biophysicist Donald Haynie: [2]
“Any theory claiming to describe how organisms originate and continue to exist by natural causes must be compatible with the first and second laws of thermodynamics.”
Other possible laws of life yet to be discerned may possibly develop in relation to gravity, relativity, particle physics, quantum electrodynamics, among others.
Defunct theory
In 2009, with the defunct theory of life, life has been found to be akin to ether, and non existent; therefore, any so-deemed "laws of life", if cogent, are reducable to physics and chemistry.
References
1. Taine, Hippolyte. (1870). De l’Intelligence (On Intelligence) (Part I, Part II), (pg. xi-xii), London: L. Reeve and Co.
2. Haynie, Donald. (2001). Biological Thermodynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
