Czy paleontologii jest potrzebna definicja życia?

Abstrakt

Does palaeontology need a definition of life?

The aim of the paper is to try to answer the question of whether paleontology needs a definition of life. Although paleontologists, both in the past and in the present, often have to decide whether or not an object is of organic origin, they do not use the definition of life for this purpose, but refer either to the simple criteria of similarity to today’s organisms or to the broad resources of biology, geology and chemistry. The example of paleontology shows that any possible definition of life could be at most a brief, temporary formula collecting a set of biological information.