Life is only a way to break down concentrations of energy and turn it into diffuse waste heat.
...
In the end, the purpose of life turns out to be death: Nature invented life on Earth as the most efficient process to reduce the gradient created by the Sun heating the Earth. The ultimate goal is to reestablish an equilibrium that will, incidentally, destroy all life when life will no longer needed to reduce a gradient that life will have erased. The meaning of life is, ultimately, suicide.

This book is an invaluable compendium of everything that has been written on the subject of thermodynamic study of life over the last century.

© review by Piero Scaruffi of "The Meaning of Life" (James Kay & Eric Schneider, Univ of Chicago Press, 2005) перевел

And one more. Also The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems

Interestingly, "The Meaning of Life" is not listed at Chicago University Press site. The closest one is Into the Cool by Schneider, Eric D. and Dorion Sagan.  ¶ 4:41 PM