Posted on 11/20/2005 9:27:40 AM PST by restornu
One theory of life is that all 'life' forms are just various mutations of a virus. Earth has one kind of intelligent virus and other planets in the universe might have other virus forms which could be considered life as well.
Why wouldn't a virus be considered a life form?
nothing....but I'll be in California for a bit of time.....perhaps we'll even go out to the desert and soak up some rays. : )
Palm Springs area?
Not at all. My question is whether any IDers also fear Bird Flu. They can squirm out of the question by denying that viruses are living in the first place.
C'mon you guys, focus... What do you think of this evolutionary stuff? Seriously.
By the end of 1984, 62 genera and 2,822 described species of this family were known worldwide, and at least 4,000 species were predicted to exist (Wheeler 1986). This catalog records over 1,000 species in 65 genera and subgenera from the Australasian/Oceanian Regions.All of these forms are still in the one big family. When something evolves all the way out of that family, we get to wake up fzx12345.
Except the way cladistics works, we probably never get to wake up fzx12345. That's because when you can't describe Drosophilidae with just species, genera, and maybe the occasional recourse to sub-genera, you don't create a new family alongside the existing Drosophilidae. IOW, if something is known to have originated within Drosophilidae, we try to preserve that relationship forever.
Thus what you do is you bump Drosophilidae up a notch and now it's an order rather than a family. Nothing ever wanders "out" of it.
Of course, the order that used to contain Drosophilidae bumps up a notch, too. Maybe you just call it a super-order to contain the ripple effect, or maybe you call it a class. If you do the latter, now Insecta becomes a super-class or something. For sure, you don't create a new phylum unless there's a whole new body plan, so you have to get inventive somewhere along the way up the hierarchy.
There has been so much effort put into asserting that a living cell must have certain this and that to qualify as no-question life, that viruses have been marginalized. They do have the composition of parts of cells. It is the part that seems to drive mutation and evolution, but can it carry consciousness?
Palm Desert
I hear ya. Yes a virus is alive IMHO. But I am not a microbiologist.
What's the definition of consciousness? Free will?
sounds like a nice time to visit too.
I have my own ideas but, just like everyone else, since no one was around, it's all theories/speculation. Credible science includes the scientific method---the ability for anybody to reproduce the "test" and have the same effect. And that's not possible with much of these theories or speculations.
glad to be there for a couple of weeks, rather than endure the coldness/dreariness here for months on end.
*Shrill warning sirens*
:-)
Consciousness is the subject of many books and articles going back thousands of years. Has the definition been nailed down yet? Is there such a thing as free will? Is free will even possible? The jury is still out, even though ex cathedra readings have been emitted.
lol! oh well, too bad. : )
:-)
I hear ya. Just thought I'd try to get you guys involved in the evo thread. I do have to go.
By any chance, Did anyone write a paper for me this morning on the heuristics of an object-oriented expert support system for design collaboration: A rear spar structure aerospace application? ;(
I'll bet no one did. :( God! I love to screw around!
Show off.....
Sounds like it's up the shark's alley all right!
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