I feel many of the examples you gave for “Form” dont even really fit. “Chairs” are an abstraction we created, so is the sensation of temperature (albeit this sensation is less absorbed, it is more automatic, fundamental, immutable compared to the concept of a chair) I see life as reproducing emergence. I love looking at artifical life and emergence, its really interesting seeing all the different digital mediums we have created that have seemed to allow for compex evolving ‘life’ to emerge.
Seeing these “artificial life” simulations does make me see all that which only kind of fits into the definition of life. I have seen evolving organisms come out only because rules were created to give them a genome, death, and reproduction, but I have also see simulations made out of incredibly simple rules that produce complex evolving reproducing patterns.
It feels to me that “life” is just a line in the sand we have drawn, and this line exists only because stuff that falls into our “life” category are the best at reproduction and competition.
It is also my view that questions like these can be vague, leaving different people to understand the question differently, leading to them giving different responses. I personally understood this as “is the concept of life an abstraction”
Ah. did not realize that, thank you