In seeking to understand the natures of the entities around them, one of the most crucial distinctions human beings must make is that between living and non-living things. Following Rand (), we may define life as "a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action." Virtually everything we know about the structure and function of living organisms can be explained in terms of the internally generated action by which each organism sustains its life. Furthermore, such action clearly distinguishes the living from the non-living (). Consequently, this action is clearly the essential defining characteristic (pp. 1.3:38-41) of the concept.

A living thing is distinctive in that it must perform certain courses of action in order to sustain its existence. First, self-generated action necessarily implies a certain level of sophistication, as anyone who has ever attempted to design a self-replicating robot or even a computer virus has discovered.     

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