It was more of a narrowing of the definition of what constitutes life, what constitutes a person, rather than a shift or an expansion.
More valuable, though, is that it invites its young viewers to consider the individual elements that constitute life as we know it.
Repetitive work in small factories and in service industries, multigenerational legacies of alcohol abuse and poor education, poverty and unemployment constitute life for many native-born Mainers.
Unlike most of his competitors, of course, Oz has the advantage of seeing up close the threads that constitute life, at least in the technical sense.
Lawrence acknowledged that books do not constitute life, but insisted that they were "tremulations on the ether" that could make the whole man alive tremble into urgent being.
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee and a vigorous opponent of abortions, argues that a microscopic embryo in a petri dish does not constitute life, whereas an embryo in a womb does.
It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment of your existence may be only a breath away from being the last.
In the 21st century, proponents of nearly every form of institutionalised knowledge (from biology and chemistry to history and literature) have become obsessed with defining, categorising, and identifying what constitutes life itself.
The anti-abortion movement's insistence that a tiny clump of cells constitutes life just as much as a 24-week-old fetus makes it look both extreme and uncaring.
Even in its embryonic phase, chauffeurs have told me, driving for Uber meant simply not encountering many of the standard irritants and daily corruptions that constitute life in London's private hire industry – the shadow-world of its heavily regulated black taxi trade.
