Life is just the resultant network of chemical reactions that emerges from the continuing cycle of replication, mutation, complexification, and selection, when it operates on particular chain-like molecules—in the case of life on Earth, the nucleic acids. It is possible that other chemical systems could also exhibit this property, but so far this question has yet to be explored experimentally. Life then is just the chemical consequences that derive from the power of exponential growth operating on certain replicating chemical systems.
