*What is "Life"?

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What defines something as alive?

Independent existence.	13%	[ 3 ]
Motor activity/movement, however slow/limited.	0%	[ 0 ]
Sense "organs"/sensory functions which determine reactions.	4%	[ 1 ]
Transformation of energy received/construction of new material.	17%	[ 4 ]
Capable of constructing and maintaining an ion/electrical gradient.	0%	[ 0 ]
"Life force".	25%	[ 6 ]
Other, please explain in thread.	42%	[ 10 ]

Total votes : 24

ouinon
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21 Sep 2008, 12:26 pm

If life is principally defined as "something which decreases its own entropy while increasing that around it", ( and reproduction is a slightly less reliable feature), then perhaps it could be said that all of existence is involved in the process of life. That life is a relationship between increasing and decreasing entropies.

Yin and Yang?

.

greenblue
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21 Sep 2008, 12:37 pm

LKL wrote:

Interesting that despite a year of college physics and more than a year of college chemistry, radioactivity and nuclear reactions only came up in the chemistry classes:
The Chemical World: Concepts and Applications by Kotz, Joesten, Wood, and Moore, 1994, Harcourt Brace & Company, Orlando.
Chapter 19: Nuclear Chemistry
Section 19.2: Nuclear Reactions
Section 19.6: Nuclear Fission
Section 19.7: Nuclear Fusion

Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 5th ed., by Serway and Beichner, also includes a section on Nuclear reactions. So you are right that fusion can be considered within the domain of physics, but wrong that it is not also chemistry.

Interesting, that these are thought in chemistry classes and for the ones who say that nuclear reactions are not chemistry, have not replied to this, explaining why is this case.

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21 Sep 2008, 12:42 pm

chever wrote:

'BS' is the most fundamental thing. Remember:

GOD is applied POWER
which is applied GOVERNMENT
which is applied POLITICS
which is applied ADVERTISING
which is applied SOCIOLOGY
which is applied PSYCHOLOGY
which is applied BIOLOGY
which is applied CHEMISTRY
which is applied PHYSICS
which is applied MATH
which is applied PHILOSOPHY
which is applied BS

That part was stolen from XKCD!

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slowmutant
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21 Sep 2008, 12:51 pm

I chose "life-force."

The life-principle, that which is present in all forms of life.

Don't know what is it, but I can see it at work everywhere.

It's something metaphysical.

It comes from God Himself.

Haliphron
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21 Sep 2008, 12:57 pm

slowmutant wrote:

Thats called vitalism. There is NO scientific evidence for such a "life force" , which the ancient chinese refer to as Chi :wink:

. This issue has been extensively studied by western science for the last 200 years and its pretty clear that life is a complex chemo-thermodynamic process and there is no *force* that makes something alive.

slowmutant
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21 Sep 2008, 12:59 pm

Haliphron wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

Thats called vitalism. There is NO scientific evidence for such a "life force" , which the ancient chinese refer to as Chi :wink:

I strongly disagree. Why would you deny this?

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21 Sep 2008, 1:00 pm

Obviously "Life" has a different meaning for everyone.

Haliphron
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21 Sep 2008, 1:02 pm

slowmutant wrote:

Haliphron wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

Thats called vitalism. There is NO scientific evidence for such a "life force" , which the ancient chinese refer to as Chi :wink:

I strongly disagree. Why would you deny this?

Because I studied this in HS and college level biology class. I will stop denying it when someone can demonstrate before my very eyes that an inanimate object can come alive by means of channeling this divine life force.

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21 Sep 2008, 1:24 pm

Haliphron wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

Haliphron wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

Thats called vitalism. There is NO scientific evidence for such a "life force" , which the ancient chinese refer to as Chi :wink:

I strongly disagree. Why would you deny this?

And if that really did happen, right before your eyes, you still wouldn't believe because deep down you don't want to believe.

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21 Sep 2008, 2:15 pm

I think "life" plainly is a biochemical entity, but "life" in terms of consciousness and feeling? That's something completely different. "Life force" is good enough for me at this point.

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Haliphron
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21 Sep 2008, 3:04 pm

slowmutant wrote:

And if that really did happen, right before your eyes, you still wouldn't believe because deep down you don't want to believe.

You're WRONG slowmutant. You're welcome to your theories about my motives and how I would react, but I simply DO NOT see life as anything magical and/or metaphysical. The vitalist approach was used abandoned not only by pure science, but by medicine because the mechanist approach produced MUCH better results! You see, the mechanistic view actually IS consistent with the existance of (a)God. Im not making any claim about Gods existance or lack thereof, but its FOOLISH of you to see natural processes as miraculous and unexplainable by science.

Last edited by Haliphron on 23 Sep 2008, 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

slowmutant
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21 Sep 2008, 10:17 pm

Haliphron wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

And if that really did happen, right before your eyes, you still wouldn't believe because deep down you don't want to believe.

You're WRONG slowmutant. You're welcome to you little theories about my motives and how I would react, but I simply DO NOT see life as anything magical and/or metaphysical. The vitalist approach was used abandoned not only by pure science, but by medicine because the mechanist approach produced MUCH better results! You see, the mechanistic view actually IS consistent with the existance of (a)God. Im not making any claim about Gods existance or lack thereof, but its FOOLISH of you to see natural processes as miraculous and unexplainable by science.

You are equally welcome to your theories, Haliphron.

I should leave this thread now.

chever
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21 Sep 2008, 10:24 pm

Orwell wrote:

chever wrote:

That part was stolen from XKCD!

It's the other way around. xkcd is pretty new on the block, where the nihilistic quip I posted is from the fortune-mod 'offensive' fortune collection. It's from the early nineties at the latest.

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21 Sep 2008, 11:30 pm

All of these are reminiscent of an older quote which went something to the effect of:
Physicists defer only to the mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God, although you may be hard-pressed to find a mathematician that modest. - Leon M. Lederman

Of course, as for the "that modest" part, whenever this quote is brought up, I usually do point out that I do not answer to God even...

Although I usually see it with biologists and chemists thrown in at the beginning, but I can't find it sourced just yet to any particular individual. It generally goes more like:
"Biologists defer to chemists. Chemists defer to physicists. Physicists defer to mathematicians. Mathematicians defer only to God"

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21 Sep 2008, 11:48 pm

twoshots wrote:

Thats really nice but do you have nothing more to say about what (the most accurate definition of) Life is?

chever
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22 Sep 2008, 1:08 am

IMO, the most essential traits of life are the ability to multiply and some ability to map percepts to actions, if not the whole gamut. And I am aware that's a pretty broad definition, which includes machine life.

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