  The possible distinction between inanimate and living matter has been of
interest to humanity since thousands of years. Clearly, such a rich question
can not be answered in a single manner, and a plethora of approaches naturally
do exist. However, during the last two decades, a new standpoint, of
thermostatistical nature, has emerged. It is related to the proposal of
nonadditive entropies in 1988, in order to generalise the celebrated
Boltzmann-Gibbs additive functional, basis of standard statistical mechanics.
Such entropies have found deep fundamental interest and uncountable
applications in natural, artificial and social systems. In some sense, this
perspective represents an epistemological paradigm shift. These entropies
crucially concern complex systems, in particular those whose microscopic
dynamics violate ergodicity. Among those, living matter and other living-like
systems play a central role. We briefly review here this approach, and present
some of its predictions, verifications and applications.
