note that cristals also grow under the right environment, okay they dont replicate.
But how a bush fire, it does replicate to other trees.
I think with live, a definition is required, and that might get complex.
But I think it should respond to its environment, with a strategy to survive environment dangers.
For example the bushfire shouldnt run out of trees. So it needs a way to conserve itself.
A simple biological virus, folows simple rules often, but their numbers make them survive.
But then what about the wheater patern, its shifting and continously changing, and its a closed system on itself.
There should be a next rule I think that such systems are not called life, but be called environment.
An environment is a system that folows rules of its own, wich are generated by itself.
Its a system which is often chaotic in nature, and has no goal to survive, it simply is there, like space itself.
Then is darwinbots life ?
It is artificial life, in a sense that its enviroment is based on math, it folows simple rules so it can stay alive in that area.
The area is however verry limited, a bots definition doesnt work on a different planet with no computers.
So a next rule for more comonly known life might be :
That it can deal with its chemical environment, as if it contains a language, a system (biomolecular bioligy) to interact in its environment.
But maybe appart from known life it could also exist in, plasma, radiation, quantum fields, etc, things we now hardly understand.