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I don't think the terms and definitions (life vs. alive) are the best possible for making sense of this topic. I think we can distinguish between: * A living
by jawns 7y ago
I don't think the terms and definitions (life vs. alive) are the best possible for making sense of this topic.
I think we can distinguish between:
* A living cat
* A dead cat
* A cat's living or dead skin cell
* A self-replicating 3D printer called Alice
I don't like the term "life" to refer to both the living and the dead cat. It seems bizarre to have concepts of "living life" and "non-living life."
I would rather say "living organism" and "dead organism," the latter of which implies that at once point it was a living organism.
And the cat's skin cell is not an organism at all; it is a living (or dead) _part_ of an organism.
Alice, on the other hand, is not an organism or a part of an organism. I would not use the same term for Alice as I would for biological life. Philosophically, does Alice constitute artificial life? Maybe. But calling Alice "living" with no qualifiers seems off.
- cdirkx 7y agoWhy is the skin cell not an organism though? The definitions for 'organism' vary, but a common theme seems to be an interdependant system comprised of 'organs' with different specific functions that together form a greater whole. But is a cell not comprised of organelles? Mitochondia have their own dna and it is theorized that they were originally a seperate lifeform in a symbiotic relationship. The same goes for other specialized structures like chloroplasts in plants. On the other end of the spectrum, would we classify groups or societies as organisms, with individuals carrying out specialized purposes? Is a society, nation or company alive? Perhaps not in the biological sense we commonly use the words, just like Alice. But that might just be our own carbon-based bias ;)
- saagarjha 7y agoSkin cells die rather quickly without their support networks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- danans 7y agoIsn't this true for any organism, for varying definitions of "quickly" and "support network". Compared to extremophiles like waterbears [1], most of us seem very fragile and dependent on our environment. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
- toasterlovin 7y agoYes, but multicellular organisms have evolved specifically to contain lineages of cells that form specialized tissue that allows them to better exploit certain ecological niches. These specialized tissues are only possible if the lineages of cells that make up the tissue specialize to a degree that makes them unviable on their own. That is categorically different from, say, a bacterial cell, which is evolved to exist and reproduce on its own.
- corodra 7y agoA gear, by itself, is not a machine. A skin cell, by itself, cannot function or survive as a living organism.
- dual_basis 7y agoHow long would the average human survive if placed in an environment with no other humans?
- lifeeeeee 7y ago> It seems bizarre to have concepts of "living life" and "non-living life." So all the dinosaurs found on earth are not "life" according to your definition? If we found a bone on Mars, wouldn't all the press say "life found on Mars?"
- corodra 7y agoThey are not life anymore. They WERE life. The English language has mechanisms to differentiate past and present. Ignoring those mechanisms do not prove points.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoNo, bone could have come off-world.
- dTal 7y agoWould your intuition on Alice change if we had herds of escaped Alices roaming the Serengeti, mining metals and quietly carving out a life for themselves? What if they were entirely carbon based, and constructed themselves out of natural biomaterials? What if they were also very small, and formed colonies on food that had been left out?