Editorial board editor-in-chief

The automaticity of nature
It appears that the most consistent deinition of life, which is still 
valid today, was provided by Claude Bernard in the 19
th
century, 
who explained that “the stability of the internal environment is the 
condition for free life. All of the vital mechanisms, however varied 
they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity 
of the conditions of life in the internal environment” [6]. In our 
understanding this deinition explains also the ultimate goal of 
cells and living forms. In his deinition Claude Bernard introduced 
also the idea of independence, that is, the independence which 
the organism has of its external environment. The freedom of ac
-
tion, which increases with the increasing complexity of biological 
systems, appears to be the most common feature of living forms. 
Freedom is a measure of the complexity of automatic structures. 
The decision to initialize a function is made in automatic closed-
circuit systems, and the range of freedom increases with the 
increasing complexity of the system via regulatory coupling. 
The possibility of making the independent choice is a measure 
of freedom.
The characteristics and properties of biological forms we refer 
to as living may be accounted for by their automaticity. However, 
it is dificult to accept the simple understanding of biological 
systems as automatic structures. Today, due to technology and 
especially robotization, we are capable of creating automatons 
close to living forms. The demarcation line between living things 
and man-made structures becomes blurred.
However, biological entities are different even from the most 
wonderful robots in the fact of belonging to the natural world 
which has its laws and rules stigmatizing individual entities. The 
differences stem from this very fact. The belonging to the natural 
world imposes certain rules which are unknown in the sphere of 
automation and robotization. This results in the occurrence of 
speciic properties. One of these properties is programmed cell 
death – the process which is fundamental in nature as a whole. 
It stems from the philosophy of nature, not of the individual, 
and is a prerequisite for maintaining balance and development 
in nature. Programmed death is common to all normal (in com
-
pliance with the philosophy of nature) biological individuals. It 
becomes manifest in the determined number of cell divisions, 
aging and apoptosis. The setting of the inal stage, i.e. death, 
in a life process program requires the inclusion of a time factor 
and clock mechanism. Process periodicity, including irst of all 
the circadian cycle, is an integral part of living organisms [7, 8]. 
The individuals without the mechanism of death in their cycle 
(for instance immortal neoplastic cells) are regarded as a foreign 
and destructive element. Immortal and non-aging cells do not 
adhere to a living thing program. They are not consistent with 
the deinition of biological life because they do not possess the 
program of death. In this respect the deinition of life must be 
conventional assuming that nature itself determines what is 
alive. While analyzing the characteristics of biological forms on 
the border between the animate and inanimate world, one may 
become aware of the fact how far the inevitability of death is 
binding in the natural world.