[Corpora-List] What is corpora and what is not?

[Alexander Yeh]

Laurence Anthony wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Patrick Juola <juola at mathcs.duq.edu> wrote:
>>> Hmm, many people have contributed. Are we all just being silly?
>>
>> Yes, bluntly.
>
> OK. Sorry to be silly!
>
>
>>> Can you give me an example of one of the "broad terms" that a
>>> scientist (e.g. physicist) uses which is not defined?
>>
>> "Life."  (biology)  "Matter." (physics)  "Mind." (psychology)
>> "Thought." (psychology, again)  "Illness."  (medicine)
>
> Really. A very quick review of relevant sites gave me the following.
> I'm sure I could get more authoritative definitions if I tried:
>
> life (biology)
> http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Life

 From my memory of biology, the definition here:
"(1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead 
organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the 
capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce"

is not totally accepted as it would exclude viruses (which are studied 
in biology):

viruses stay the same size (do not grow and get bigger), do not 
metabolize for energy, etc., and do not reproduce on their own or with 
each other.
Viruses just take over a cell and commands the cell's "machinery" to 
make copies of the virus.


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