Posted on 04/05/2009 8:10:35 PM PDT by betty boop
When a molecular structure is no longer able to consume metabolic energy to maintain and replicate its structures, when instead its organized molecular structures begin to break down and give off energy, then it no longer fits the definition of life, does it?
Therefore it would be dead.
Life and death is not at all relevant to “who am I”.
I am not my body. My body shall live and die.
I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.
Agreed dearest sister in Christ! One clear sign of life seems to be the ability of an organism to "communicate" and "process information." Another seems to be the ability to maintain distance from thermal equilibrium. Et al. It seems life forms — unlike inorganic entities and machines — are complex open systems. We can tot up a list of features based on observation and analysis, but such a list will not tell us what life IS, just "what it looks like," and how it "behaves."
As Robert Rosen put it, "What is Life?" is the single most difficult and intractable question in science. He strongly suggests that the question cannot be answered absent Aristotle's idea of final cause — which as you'll recall Francis Bacon "abolished" from science. Certainly the Newtonian Paradigm has abolished it.
Thank you so much for your excellent essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!
A-G: That is a description of what life looks like, but it doesn't answer what life v. non-life/death in nature "is."
I agree, dearest sister in Christ. AMD's might be a good description of what life does, but it does not tell us anything about what life is. Plus it is notably silent about how the organism acquired "its own structures" in the first place.
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
Jesus only saves those who beleive in creation
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And only htose hwo beleive in a young earth
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And intelligent design
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And in irreducible complexty
I like that. I think I will steal it : )
So you think the Pope is not saved because he doesn’t believe in a young Earth?
[[I shall exist forever through the salvation of our Lord Jesus the Christ.]]
And only those who blieve the fossil record shows discontinuity, NOT continuity
Thank you so very much for your wonderful insights and encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!
Claude Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication is the foundation theory of the branch of Mathematics called "Information Theory."
AMEN to that, dearest sister in Christ!
Tear down that wall!
It seems you are giving a description of a "closed system" here allmendream. But if living systems are open systems, as increasingly seems likely, then this "mechanistic" description is leaving out something vitally important (no pun intended). Plus your "model" simply takes life "for granted," assuming right up front that closed (e.g., inorganic) systems can be alive (or become alive) — which is begging the question, to put it mildly.
What about consuming energy makes you think I am in ANY WAY talking about a closed system?
What do you think I am leaving out of my description of life?
The vital spark provided by God?
Cannot be determined by scientific analysis. You were asking a biologist for a definition of life however, not a theologian.
The definition I provided is perfectly adequate for a physical description of what life is. If you want to get all metaphysical about the subject, have at it, but nothing of utility will come from it.
It reminds me a lot of the idea that a quantum collapse doesn’t happen unless there is an observer.
The way you were speaking connoted to my mind a state of entropy. (As if entropy = physical death). It is my understanding that entropy is that which inevitably occurs in closed systems.
What do you think I am leaving out of my description of life?.... The vital spark provided by God?
No. You continue to misunderstand me on his point. Questions about God are not scientific questions. Further, I am neither a mechanist nor a vitalist. What you are leaving out of your description of life are all the non-physical aspects (e.g., an explanation of biological organization targeted to biological function). Which being phenomenal ought to be susceptible to scientific analysis.
The fact is Darwin's theory has nothing to say about the organism qua organism. In fact Darwinism has effectively redefined biology, asserting that biology is about "evolution" rather than about "organism." In Robert Rosen's view (see his magisterial Life Itself, 1999, from which the following quotations were drawn; pp. 255–257), Darwin's theory turns evolution, thus biology, into "a collection of pure historical chronicles, like tables of random numbers, or stock exchange quotations."
Rosen can get even more pointed than that:
This picture struck me early as a kind of mythology, with evolution as protagonist, in its exact dictionary meaning of "serving to explain or sanctify some concept, usage, institution, or natural phenomenon."The definition I provided is perfectly adequate for a physical description of what life is. If you want to get all metaphysical about the subject, have at it, but nothing of utility will come from it.It was, for instance, entirely on such grounds that the ideas of Walter Elsasser ... were not only dismissed, but violently attacked, by those biologists who bothered to read what he had written. All Elsasser did was to exploit the [commonly accepted] assumption that organisms are "rare" among material systems, and hence disappear from "general laws" obtained by averaging. He was thus led to suggest that, in the sparse realm he envisioned for biology, there would be "biotonic laws" governing what went on there; not derivable from the average, "general" laws, although compatible with them. It was this last suggestion, that "laws" were operative at all in this biotonic realm, which exposed him to violent attack from the biological side. Mere paraphrase cannot convey the character of these. Here, for instance, are the words of [Nobel Laureate in Biology] Jacques Monod:
Summarized in a few words, here is Elsasser's position.With this language, then, Monod consigned Elsasser to the category of "scientific Vitalism," one of the lower rungs of his scientific Hell. And yet, all Elsasser did to deserve this was to draw an inconvenient conclusion from Monod's own assertion, embodied in the first few sentences of the preface to Chance and Necessity, that "Biology ... (is) marginal because — the living world constituting by a tiny and very 'special' part of the universe — it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere."The strange properties (of organisms) are doubtless not at odds with physics; but the physical forces and chemical reactions brought to light by the study of nonliving systems do not fully account for them. Hence it must be realized that over and above physical principles and adding themselves thereto, others are operative in living matter, but not in non-living systems where, consequently, these electively vital principles could not be discovered. It is these principles — or, to borrow from Elsasser's terminology, these "biotonic laws" — that must be elucidated.... The least one can say is that the arguments of these physicists is oddly lacking in strictness and solidity. (Chance and Necessity, pp. 27–28, emphases in original).
Monod's language, and that of countless other similar assertions which could be adduced, is clearly not the language of collegial scientific discourse. It is rather the response of someone who feels his myths are under attack. That is, it expresses a religious rather than a scientific attitude.
The above remarks from both Rosen and Monod do not deal with metaphysics.
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