{"id":124,"date":"2012-10-28T21:07:26","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T02:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=124"},"modified":"2012-10-28T21:07:26","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T02:07:26","slug":"what-is-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2012\/10\/28\/what-is-life\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous post, I commented that life is like porn.\u00a0 We know it when we see it… or at least we thing we do.\u00a0 It’s really astonishing how arrogant we humans can be.\u00a0 There’s a dedicated group of believers<\/a> who think that the entire universe (all 4.077 x 10^32 cubic light years of it<\/a>) exist just for them.\u00a0 We have trashed our planet because some moldy old book of legends says we get “dominion over the Earth”.<\/p>\n

Yet, we, in all of thousands of years of sentience, can’t define something that we see around us all day.\u00a0 Porn… I mean… life.<\/p>\n

When I was in high school, we were taught that there were some specific characteristics of life.\u00a0 We were taught six of them.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Made of cells<\/li>\n
  2. Grows and Develops<\/li>\n
  3. Homeostasis<\/li>\n
  4. Reproduction<\/li>\n
  5. Metabolism<\/li>\n
  6. Responds to the environment and movement<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Well, that’s really eight.\u00a0 Another version of this list also has “adapts”<\/a>.\u00a0 But let’s be skeptical for a minute.\u00a0 If we define life as it must have all of these things, then we are immediately leaving out computer systems.\u00a0 They are not made of cells.\u00a0 They don’t reproduce… well computers don’t, but software can.\u00a0 They don’t metabolize… well, they take in energy.\u00a0 They don’t adapt… except some software does (even going so far as to develop logical functions that weren’t programmed into it).\u00a0 They don’t maintain homeostasis… except for my computer which has a fan tied to the motherboard which increases speed as the CPU works harder.<\/p>\n

    So, is a computer alive?\u00a0 Of course not… I think.<\/p>\n

    Here’s another interesting question.\u00a0 An organism, say a parrot, dies.\u00a0 It’s dead…<\/p>\n

    \u201cHe’s not pining, he’s passed on. This parrot is no more. He has ceased to be. He’s expired and gone to meet his maker. He’s a stiff, bereft of life, he rests in peace. If you hadn’t have nailed him to the perch he’d be pushing up the daisies. He’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Yet, everything I’ve read has stated that there is a lot of cellular activity that continues after death.\u00a0 Muscles can twitch, cells can divide, all kinds of things.\u00a0 I understand ‘brain death’, but there is still life left in the body.<\/p>\n

    I think I can make things even weirder.\u00a0 Ready?\u00a0 What about an apple that has fallen from a tree? Is it alive?<\/p>\n

    Well, let’s look at our list.\u00a0 Does the apple reproduce?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It is part of the reproductive system of the tree, but it doesn’t reproduce.\u00a0 Does the apple adapt. metabolize, respond to the environment, grow, develop, or maintain homeostasis?\u00a0 No, the apple does none of these things, so is it not-alive?\u00a0 Of course it’s alive… I think.<\/p>\n

    There are cells in the apple that are alive and kicking.\u00a0 And individual cells may be doing the things listed, but the apple as a whole is not.\u00a0 So why is an apply considered to be ‘alive’ while a dead parrot (that has cells doing at least some of those things) considered ‘not alive’?<\/p>\n

    This isn’t just an academic question.\u00a0 This is a real puzzler and greater minds than myself have thought about this for decades and are no closer to an answer.\u00a0 I’m reminded of a story I read.\u00a0 It seems there was a big conference and a bunch of scientists and philosophers got together and tried to define life.\u00a0 Every single time someone came up with a definition of life, someone could provide a counter example of something that was considered alive, but didn’t meet that requirement.\u00a0 Finally, they narrowed it down to one thing.\u00a0 The ability to reproduce.\u00a0 if something could reproduce, then it was alive.\u00a0 Everyone congratulated themselves, until a small voice from the back piped up, “Then one rabbit by itself is not alive.\u00a0 Only two rabbits together can be alive.”<\/p>\n

    I don’t know how true this is, but it was reported to me as being true.<\/p>\n

    I don’t know if we’ll ever have an actual answer, but as we get closer and closer to things that science fiction writers dreamed up decades ago, it’s something we need to think about.\u00a0 Can a computer system or program ever be ‘alive’?\u00a0 Is a silicon-based intelligence alive or not?<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In a previous post, I commented that life is like porn.\u00a0 We know it when we see it… or at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,86,6,11],"tags":[88,87,937],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-philosophy","category-science","category-skepticism","tag-biology-2","tag-life-2","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}