Jonathan Loh in The Guardian:
On Mount Athos, in northern Greece, a monk rises before dawn to sing the same office that has been sung on that mountain for more than 1,000 years. He learned it from older monks who came before him, who learned it in turn in an unbroken chain stretching back to Athanasios the Athonite, in AD963.
Over the centuries, individual monks have come and gone, and yet their chants, prayers, oaths, costumes and ceremonies endure. This persistence is remarkable and revealing: cultural traditions endure because they share a fundamental property with biological organisms. They are alive. Not metaphorically, but literally. I believe that human culture isn’t just an accidental add-on to organic life; rather, it’s a separate expression of life in its own right. But first we should define our terms. What is life? There isn’t just one answer; indeed, the lack of a clear definition has become a kind of bad joke among life scientists, who can’t quite agree what it is they actually study.
More here.
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