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One can generally define living things by their ability to maintain homeostasis, organize, adapt and respond to stimuli, grow and reproduce, and metabolize through some means of consuming energy.
At least, this is the case for a great deal of biological life on Earth. I get the feeling that as our knowledge of biology increases, we'll continually have to redefine just what it is we mean by "life." I tend to identify living things as some sort of system that actively responds to their environment in ways that facilitate the continuation of their species.
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