Afterword
This book has two aims. Firstly, it suggests an understanding and definition of the term Life that may be generally acceptable and usable. The core statement is the one of chapter 3, respectively definition 3.1: life is the interaction between data processing and reproduction. Secondly, it summarises and recapitulates some general information about the phenomenon Life and draws some conclusions. One main conclusion is that life effectively is evolution with the inherent but undirected purpose to keep itself running (see chapter 10).
If you find my English far from being perfect, I will definitely not disagree. I have not written this book in my mother language in order to maximise the number of people that potentially read it. I am confident, however, that the meaning of my writing becomes clear enough to be understood. If you are an English native speaker who would like to review my formulations and wording, feel free to contact me.
Software developers usually follow a good practice when naming a release candidate: they set three single version numbers together. The first one is increased for a fundamental renewal, the second one for significant modifications such as meaningful additions and the third one for smaller changes such as corrections. I follow this best practise here, because my thoughts about this topic develop over time.
Current version: v1.3.0
For the current version a large number of corrections and improvements has been made in the existing chapters, but mainly, the new chapters 8 (Artificial Life) and 10 (Life, Evolution and Purpose) have been introduced. In addition, this eBook is no more optimized for the PDF format which should increase the readability of the epub and mobi format.
About the author
I started studying biology at the University of Tübingen in 1990. I did my diploma in 1996 after finishing my thesis about the colour change of flowers and its interplay with insect pollinators. From 1997 until 2000 I did my Ph.D. at the University of Aachen. I specialised in macroecology and studied the interactions of plants and their animal seed dispersers. After my Ph.D., I finished my academic life.
In 2000 I started to work as software developer. Gaining expertise in the field of software development and informatics, I applied the broad view of a macroecologist to computer systems and founded with a collaborator the knowledge base called Clean Coding Cosmos.
Having intensely worked on both biological and computer systems, I was able to learn the meaning of their similarities: information-processing. This experience inspired and enabled me to write this book.