Life: A definition

[Arnold Day]

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I think the definitions of 'life' and 'non life' are mostly useless; consider that all matter is made fundamentally of energy... all things are composed of the same material there is nothing unique about 'life' as opposed to 'non life'. I'm not saying you can't make some arbitrary defintion if you want... it just doesn't matter.

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Really? Do you even know what you are stating? I don't think you do.

Life on Mars

Model Methanogens

That Meterorite

-Zeno

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What do your links have to do with what he said? I agree that living/not living will be a somewhat useless concept in the future. It is similar to how when you are a kid they teach you about the states of matter(solid, liquid, gas) but when you get older you see that many things don't belong to any of these categories.

[vhawk01]

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I think the definitions of 'life' and 'non life' are mostly useless; consider that all matter is made fundamentally of energy... all things are composed of the same material there is nothing unique about 'life' as opposed to 'non life'. I'm not saying you can't make some arbitrary defintion if you want... it just doesn't matter.

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Really? Do you even know what you are stating? I don't think you do.

Life on Mars

Model Methanogens

That Meterorite

-Zeno

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What do your links have to do with what he said? I agree that living/not living will be a somewhat useless concept in the future. It is similar to how when you are a kid they teach you about the states of matter(solid, liquid, gas) but when you get older you see that many things don't belong to any of these categories.

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Wait...they don't? You mean like glass or chocolate or butter? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Piers]

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I think the definitions of 'life' and 'non life' are mostly useless; consider that all matter is made fundamentally of energy... all things are composed of the same material there is nothing unique about 'life' as opposed to 'non life'. I'm not saying you can't make some arbitrary defintion if you want... it just doesn't matter.

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You could say the same thing about a banana and a lump or plutonium; they are both made of fundamental energy so no difference really. And of course you would be correct, except that the lump of plutonium would not taste as nice as the banana if you eat it but then we just the same stuff as well so it does not matter anyway.

I guess Zeno just wanted to make an arbitrary definition for some reason. Something to do with some article that took his fancy.

Personally I find a strict definition of life not worth the effort, just leave it to ones gut feeling otherwise its too confusing. Stuff like “are all sapient self aware entitles alive?” both yes and no answers can easily get you all muddled up.

[Zeno]

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I agree that living/not living will be a somewhat useless concept in the future.

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I do not know who you are agreeing with but the above statement is curious to a high degree. You are implying that at present living/not living is a useful concept but that at some point in the future this distinction will become useless. Science aside, I wonder what the legal communities response to this concept will be.

Are you a living being? How do you know?

Most observable matter on earth is in either of three states: gas, liquid or solid,( man in a laboratory can produce different states also, plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate etc) and in the universe as a whole more exotic states of matter do exist. States of Matter

-Zeno

[Siegmund]

I came to the conclusion some years ago that it didn't make much sense to ask "what is life," but rather, to ask "how alive is something".

I've only seen one attempt to quantify the aliveness of something, "Wesley's L": energy flux per unit mass, times the amount by which the object's entropy is reduced compared to a maximum-entropy arrangement of the same atoms. I ran across it in a book on computer artificial-life experiments probably 15 years ago. The citation in the appendix, if anyone cares, is J.P. Wesley, 1974. Ecophysics: the Application of Physics to Ecology. I may have to ILL it, now that you've reminded me of it...

I'm surprised I haven't seen a half-dozen other competing measures of aliveness.

[Zeno]

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I guess Zeno just wanted to make an arbitrary definition for some reason. Something to do with some article that took his fancy.


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I made no definition of life myself. I posted some links that gave some defining charateristics on what is life. The first link also went into more detail and depth on a definition of life and the possible defects and/or limitations that a definition may impose.

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Personally I find a strict definition of life not worth the effort, just leave it to ones gut feeling otherwise its too confusing.

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First, see my book recommendation in a previous post above. Second, arbitrary gut feelings lead to confusion - In fact, much more confusion than the employment of the scientific method I would submit. The last 400 years of the history of science has proven that. But many people find this easy to dismiss. This is not surprising but it is unfortunate.

-Zeno

[Piers]

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First, see my book recommendation in a previous post above. Second, arbitrary gut feelings lead to confusion - In fact, much more confusion than the employment of the scientific method I would submit. The last 400 years of the history of science has proven that. But many people find this easy to dismiss. This is not surprising but it is unfortunate.

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Well all else equal you are correct. The difference however between “gut feeling” and a standardised definition is in expectations.

If I use a “gut” masseurs I am fully aware it’s a fairly arbitrary subjective measure which can freely change with context. Which means I wont give my definition any more weight than it deserves.

A standardised definition of life will typically be raised to higher standard, while its still basically arbitrary many people will treat it as if it is not. Leading to lots of pointless definition fights.

Standardising the definition of life might be useful for calibrating scientific progress, although I would prefer to qualify the term life. (self aware life, conscious life, aware life, organic life, computerised life, artificial life, naturally evolved life, viral life, sub viral life etc. etc.) For my own thought processes I personally don’t like to do this, I found a more flexible context dependent usage less confusing; maybe I am just weird.