Quotation

"There is, as philosopher Michael Thompson has demonstrated, no "real definition" of life, no set of unambiguous empirical criteria to differentiate living from nonliving substance (including, it must be said, the presence of DNA, which Thompson correctly identifies as the fetish concept of our time)." *

W. J. T. Mitchell
"What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images", Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2005, p.52

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* Cf. Michael Thompson, "The representation of Life", in "Virtues and Reasons: Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot" (eds. Rosalind Hursthouse; Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 248-296.