*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

greenblue
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22 Sep 2008, 1:24 am

chever wrote:

IMO, the most essential traits of life are the ability to multiply and some ability to map percepts to actions

Something that I wonder, is about plants, which some people claim they perceive and feel their surroundings, and well, I know nothing about biology but it seems that their "perception" is mostly about chemical reactions from changes in their environment, rather than subjective perceptions through the senses as animals.

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22 Sep 2008, 2:12 am

Haliphron wrote:

The nuclear reactions that take place inside of stars in fact do have a lot of parallels with the metabolic reactions that occur within living organisms. Yes stars do release energy, but so do living things...

Errr.... Now who's confusing nuclear reactions with organic chemistry? Stars ram protons together and release energy by converting it from matter.
Cells break down some molecules in order to release the energy in their electron bonds, and use it to form bonds on other molecules more useful to the cell. Released energy is the waste from the breakage of the original bonds.

I don't see much parallel.

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stars DO have an internal structure, albeit simpler than living cells here on earth and that structure is MAINTAINED by the energy releasing process of thermonuclear fusion. When a star dies, the nuclear reactions that sustain it cease and its internal structure disapates-NOT unlike when a living organism dies. So with stars, death is an analogy whereas with cars its just a metaphor.

...dissipates?
Spectacularly.
Simple structure is not indicative of life; quite the contrary. It is indicative of a collection of matter following the laws of physics in a very simple and straightforward way, without the back-crosses and fudging to do an end-run around the second law that biology goes through.

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22 Sep 2008, 2:21 am

greenblue wrote:

chever wrote:

IMO, the most essential traits of life are the ability to multiply and some ability to map percepts to actions

Animals' perceptions are based on chemical reactions from changes in the environment, though. The most obvious is taste and smell, where target molecules lock into molecular receptors on taste buds or in the nose, but seeing involves photons inducing changes in photoactive pigments in the eye (IIrc); touch and hearing involve more physical motion - soundwaves causing the displacement of hair cells in the inner ear, or the compression of nerve capsules in the skin.

The difference between the 'perception' of animals and plants isn't how we do it, but what we do with it: animals have a brain to make them aware that they have sensed something, and plants do not.

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22 Sep 2008, 2:25 am

twoshots wrote:

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"

which reminds me of something else I heard long ago: ' biologists look with amusement at mathematicians, because the latter think that mathematics can accurately describe reality.'

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22 Sep 2008, 8:42 am

LKL wrote:

twoshots wrote:

which reminds me of something else I heard long ago: ' biologists look with amusement at mathematicians, because the latter think that mathematics can accurately describe reality.'

That makes no sense, on at least two levels.

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chever
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22 Sep 2008, 8:44 am

greenblue wrote:

chever wrote:

IMO, the most essential traits of life are the ability to multiply and some ability to map percepts to actions

Yeah. But that's still mapping of percepts to actions in some way.

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22 Sep 2008, 4:07 pm

twoshots wrote:

LKL wrote:

which reminds me of something else I heard long ago: ' biologists look with amusement at mathematicians, because the latter think that mathematics can accurately describe reality.'

That makes no sense, on at least two levels.

Biologists use statistics, but even statistics can, at best, only sometimes predict reality. Mathematics can provide very useful models for biology, but some biologists would say that mathematicians have a tendency to confuse the model with the real thing.

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22 Sep 2008, 6:09 pm

LKL wrote:

Mathematical biology is really growing though. A new American research facility on the subject intended to combine the efforts of biology and mathematics has just opened up, as a matter of fact.

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chever
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22 Sep 2008, 8:45 pm

I might take some undergraduate bioinformatics courses. The field uses a lot of discrete algorithms and statistics, which are of interest for me, plus it's really lucrative.

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22 Sep 2008, 10:56 pm

Biology isn't exactly the gold standard for precision anywho.

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23 Sep 2008, 11:33 am

slowmutant wrote:

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.

Why? Its pretty clear that the "life force" theory is incorrect. This notion of a Life Force, which the chinese refer to as Chi is the basis for a lot of quack holistic/alternative medicine such as energy healing, chakra's and all that other BS.
Until I see an inanimate object come to life before my very own eyes I cannot take this life force theory seriously.

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23 Sep 2008, 12:14 pm

Why would a metaphysical component of life require that inanimate things, such as rocks, also come to life?

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23 Sep 2008, 5:10 pm

chever wrote:

Why would a metaphysical component of life require that inanimate things, such as rocks, also come to life?

Im not saying it would. But HOW could you prove that life has a metaphysical component to it(beyond a reasonable doubt)?
The fact that there is such a thing as clinical death where metabolism stops but there is no degredation of cellular structures and macromolecules which in reversible. Whereas biological death, where metabolism stops AND autolysis(degredation of proteins, polysaccharides, and membrane lipids by metabolic enzymes) sets in which is Irreversible due to the increase in entropy and release of energy. The reversibility of clinical death AND the phenomenon of suspended animation is consistent with the mechanistic view and NOT the vitalist view. I mean, if there is a *life force* than why cant inorganic objects become animated by applying the life force to them?

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23 Sep 2008, 5:11 pm

We may have to wait for strong AI to arise to confirm that

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23 Sep 2008, 6:06 pm

greenblue wrote:

We may have to wait for strong AI to arise to confirm that

Once again, your confusing life with consciousness. They are Not the same thing :!:

Bacteria are alive, but they are most certainly NOT conscious.Ditto for fungi, plants, protists, and animals without central nervous systems. If AI finally succeeds in producing conscious computers, they STILL wont qualify as living because (inorganic)machines cannot reproduce or self-replicate. The closest you could get would be a sentient robot that builds identical copies of itself from preexisting parts.

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24 Sep 2008, 1:46 pm

twoshots wrote:

Biology isn't exactly the gold standard for precision anywho.

That's sort of the point. It's pretty hard to be precise with anything more complicated than the parabolic trajectory of a projectile on a windless day.

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