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I dunno if I agree it's a total navel gaze. For example I could easily see a scientist asking the question, "if mitochrondira are not alive, at which point did
by dekhn 2y ago
I dunno if I agree it's a total navel gaze.
For example I could easily see a scientist asking the question, "if mitochrondira are not alive, at which point did the phagocytosis of the initial prokaryotic cell lead to the mitochondria not being alive?" "What components were lost in the cell that lead to the loss of life?" I agree these aren't particularly useful, and are ultimately definitional, but definitions matter a lot in science, especially when paradigms change.
- andrewla 2y agoThis is a much more interesting question, and this is what I mean by an operational definition of life. In your first question, "alive" can have useful operational definitions -- whether it is viable outside of a cell, whether it has or had its own immune system and structure, how it survived without the organelles that other full-fledged cells seem to have but mitochondria lack, etc. The question in the abstract is not really useful except to answer trick questions in bar trivia.