https://designsciencejournal.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/understanding-symbiosis-in-design/

“Life is not a thing, life is a process, it’s a process that makes itself and as far as we know it’s always based on cells. Cells maybe as small as a millionth of a meter which is a micron, and these things wrap themselves into structures of their own making and intrinsic to life is the propensity to grow, to grow, to excrete and to exchange material, and to grow, and to grow, and this is life. Life is a way of behaving.

If you have a bull, and he’s fighting the bullfighter, this is life. 5 minutes later, the bull is dead. There’s no life there, the DNA is there, the carbon is there, the water is there, but the bull is dead. What has been lost? What has been lost is the process, and what is the process? It is the self-making process, where components from the environment are taken in and moved around, and changed chemically to make more. Life is expanding, always making more of itself.”

— Lynn Margulis