Death
permanent cessation of vital functions
Death is the end of an organism's life. It is the irreversible cessation of biological functions that sustain a living organism. Entropy, nature's tendency toward disorder, can contribute to the breakdown of living systems over time. Upon death, organisms stop exhibiting behavior and generally begin to decompose through various physical and chemical processes. Death can occur at any stage of development, including in infancy. A person may experience clinical death that is reversible, resulting in some cases in a near-death experience. In humans, establishing death of the brain determines that an individual has irreversibly died.
Natural selection of organisms which successfully pass on their genes to the next generation drives life to engage in a struggle for existence against death. Because of this, living things, including humans, normally fear death and have strong instincts to avoid it. Some organisms may kill other organisms, causing them to die through herbivory, predation, or parasitism in order to take resources from the bodies of other organisms into their own.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Death” is permanent cessation of vital functions. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Death, permanent and cessation, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “permanent cessation of vital functions” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4. The Library of Congress control number is sh85036085. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Death”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Death primary sources, Death archive and Death research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Death”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Death” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.