What is the difference between animate and inanimate matter? What animates living organisms?

Since the beginning of time, our world has been constantly evolving and changing its structure. From a lifeless, inhabitable mass of rocks to a planet full of life of all kinds, our Earth is home to both animate and inanimate matter. Yet where does one draw the line to decide what is alive and what is not? Who decides what constitutes life? This has always been a very challenging question in my opinion, because its implications are imperative for the decisions that people make when thinking about animal cruelty, abortion, veganism, and many more topics. If we have the answer, can we then find a recipe for it? If we can, then we would come up with a modular approach that would allow us to model life in an even more complex way, since we would be able to modify specific parts of the recipe to suit our needs.

First of all, we are aware that all life is made up of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur (Wolchover). This gives us grounds to determine that if we’re looking at a specific object, in most cases, if it doesn’t contain these elements, then it cannot be considered alive. These elements all play an important role in creating organisms. Carbon atoms easily form bonds, which are great to form large building blocks of organic molecules and create the first layer of…