The Russian biochemist Aleksandr Oparin argued that there was no real break between the organic and the inorganic, the living and the dead. What happened in one had direct matches in the other.

The British mathematician/philosopher Alfred Whitehead saw things another way:

[Physical societies, stones, or crystals] are not agencies requiring the destruction of elaborate societies derived from the environment; a living society is such an agency. The societies which it destroys are its food. This food is destroyed by dissolving it into somewhat simpler social elements. It has been robbed of something. Thus, all societies require interplay with their environment; and in the case of living societies this inter-play takes the form of robbery... Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery.