Where there is a continuum – like earnings and temperature in your example – the quantizing is indeed arbitrary and the meaning of your term “Quantizing the Continuum” is quite apparent.
Also, as Physicist suggests where one sees speciation as a continuum in the geology record, the term expresses the ambiguity of naming species per se.
And in Doctor Stochastic’s example one might quantize a continuum for the purpose of amplifying randomness in a system. That is a useful concept for understanding how a natural system might seem to operate like a finite state machine (Rocha).
Indeed, your new term “Quantizing the Continuum” certainly has many applications, but I do not believe it can apply to the definition of biological life as you originally proposed it at post 633.
Biological life is not like earnings or temperature – or incomplete records over time – or amplified randomness in a system.
I assert the distinction between that which is alive and that which is not alive is clear to anyone who has visited a morgue, been with a dying person or animal, or looked at a dead cell under a microscope.
Dead biological organisms – or dead individual molecular machines (liver, heart etc.) within the dying organism – are quite distinctive from living ones. Dead cells are quite distinctive from living cells.
A living cell communicates (Shannon information: the reduction of uncertainty in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state) and is asymmetrical. A dead cell does not communicate and is symmetrical. The DNA and chemical composition does not change at the instance of death.
Also, if “Quantizing the Continuum” precludes a clear definition of biological life then it also diminishes all abiogenesis theory – because there could not be a point at which life begins. Evolutionists then could neither successfully exclude abiogenesis nor defend against the assertion of the very same term to argue against abiogenesis by definition. If the term prevails in this debate with reference to biological life, I for one will advocate the argument exactly that way.
The strength of your argument lies in here somewhere. Something tells me that abiogenesis, given there is such a thing, is not part of said continuum. Hmmm.
Is a broken computer not distinct from a working one?
Also, if “Quantizing the Continuum” precludes a clear definition of biological life then it also diminishes all abiogenesis theory – because there could not be a point at which life begins.
I expect that if we had complete and exact information about how life began, assigning the beginning point would be a matter of acrimonious debate.
Saying "I know life when I see it, and so do you" may work as a standard after a billion (or three) years of evolution, but early on, it may not have been.
Evolutionists then could neither successfully exclude abiogenesis nor defend against the assertion of the very same term to argue against abiogenesis by definition. If the term prevails in this debate with reference to biological life, I for one will advocate the argument exactly that way.
Since we have no information about how life got started, there's no point in arguing either way. The origin of bacteria is all hypothesis, while the origin of, say, birds is not.
There are irreversible processes in organic chemistry. You can't uncook an egg. But the question has to be asked -- at what point exactly does a person (or a cell) die? What would it mean in your system of thought to take the DNA from a dead cell and transplant it to a healthy cell?
I'm sure you are aware that the definition of clinical death has shifted considerably in the last hundred years. Why?
What complusion is there for a clear point at which life begins? We argue over the definition of life, even today.