{
  "id": "biological.life",
  "term": "biological",
  "sense": "life",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "arena": "biological.adjective",
  "domain": "biological",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "it is about matter that lives",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "matter.substance",
      "live.biological",
      "life.biological"
    ],
    "interaction": "when a pattern of energy persists through time and uses energy to maintain its state despite changes, it exhibits biological life",
    "novel_properties": [
      "self-maintenance",
      "adaptive persistence",
      "organized continuity"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "E. coli bacteria replicate every 20 minutes in a human gut at 37°C.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Amazon rainforest regenerates its canopy after a lightning-caused fire.",
      "domain": "ecology"
    },
    {
      "text": "Mycobacterium tuberculosis persists in human lungs for years undetected.",
      "domain": "medicine"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "property.attribute",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "dog.animal"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "biological"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "Added missing constitutive concept 'life.biological' which captures the state of maintaining pattern through energy use; corrected typo in previously attempted component name."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-biological.life"
}