Does Life Need Water?

 It's a familiar argument. Does life need to be based off of carbon and use water as a universal solvent?

Maybe. Certainly our kind of life does. But life also needs to not be wet for certain things to happen. So, how does that even work?

Apparently, it works because water isn't always wet. Or rather, the reactions that start to form our kind of life need the water to have an edge. They happen where waves lash against a shore, where a stream goes down a slope.

This means something...it would be a lot harder for life to form on an entirely ocean world where there's nothing to break the water up.

(An underground or underice ocean is another matter, as water would be moved against the ice by various processes, so this doesn't mean Europa is out. And there is always not our kind of life).