26 Feb 2009, 1:52 am
26 Feb 2009, 9:42 am
Legato wrote:
monty wrote:
bark on a tree is indistinguishable from a rock on a mountain.
Bark on a tree has cells, metabolism, and reproduction.
alba wrote:
Maybe consciousness is a fundamental quality of the universe, and need not be equated with Earth lifeforms.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Consciousness is the product of a sufficiently "advanced" brain.
Plants exhibit tropisms, i.e. responses to light and temperature. They have no brains. It is a very primitive form of consciousness.
Lichen moss reproduces asexually when certain conditions hold in the environment. Again, no sign of brains or specialized neurological tissue.
ruveyn
26 Feb 2009, 10:10 am
ruveyn wrote:
Legato wrote:
monty wrote:
bark on a tree is indistinguishable from a rock on a mountain.
Bark on a tree has cells, metabolism, and reproduction.
alba wrote:
Maybe consciousness is a fundamental quality of the universe, and need not be equated with Earth lifeforms.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Consciousness is the product of a sufficiently "advanced" brain.
Plants exhibit tropisms, i.e. responses to light and temperature. They have no brains. It is a very primitive form of consciousness.
Lichen moss reproduces asexually when certain conditions hold in the environment. Again, no sign of brains or specialized neurological tissue.
ruveyn
Apparently Christians reproduced asexually at least once.
26 Feb 2009, 10:26 am
26 Feb 2009, 10:37 am
Legato wrote:
monty wrote:
bark on a tree is indistinguishable from a rock on a mountain.
Bark on a tree has cells, metabolism, and reproduction.
My point is - humans don't live long, their sensory organs can sample less than 1/1,000,000th of the electromagnetic spectrum, and their brains are limited. We don't always know what life is, we don't understand the universe. If something is 'alive' on a spatial and temporal scale that is many orders of magnitude over us, we may be unable to perceive such life.
26 Feb 2009, 11:09 am
monty wrote:
Legato wrote:
monty wrote:
bark on a tree is indistinguishable from a rock on a mountain.
Bark on a tree has cells, metabolism, and reproduction.
My point is - humans don't live long, their sensory organs can sample less than 1/1,000,000th of the electromagnetic spectrum, and their brains are limited. We don't always know what life is, we don't understand the universe. If something is 'alive' on a spatial and temporal scale that is many orders of magnitude over us, we may be unable to perceive such life.
Some of our sensory deficits and compensated by our instruments. Even so we are 15 orders of magnitude removed from Planck Length. It is highly unlikely that members of our species will get to the Rock Bottom of the Physical Cosmos.
ruveyn
26 Feb 2009, 11:58 am
ruveyn wrote:
monty wrote:
Legato wrote:
monty wrote:
bark on a tree is indistinguishable from a rock on a mountain.
Bark on a tree has cells, metabolism, and reproduction.
My point is - humans don't live long, their sensory organs can sample less than 1/1,000,000th of the electromagnetic spectrum, and their brains are limited. We don't always know what life is, we don't understand the universe. If something is 'alive' on a spatial and temporal scale that is many orders of magnitude over us, we may be unable to perceive such life.
Some of our sensory deficits and compensated by our instruments. Even so we are 15 orders of magnitude removed from Planck Length. It is highly unlikely that members of our species will get to the Rock Bottom of the Physical Cosmos.
ruveyn
There is an interesting article in the March 2009 Scientific American on page 13 on the impossibility of knowledge of our universe ever being complete.
