General > Biology

The first wet alife?

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Endy:
I'm still not sure that being able to reproduce should be a requirement. There are many who lack the ability to reproduce but are still living. Something more along the lines of, having the potential at any point in its life to have been able to reproduce; would be more inclusive.

I think death is a requirement too, but that brings into question of whether immortality for humans would make us less alive.

Testlund:
How about this: The earth is alive. The moon is dead.  

The earth is like a living cell and we're just parts of the machinery.  

Nums explanation makes sense from a humans part of view. But I think the most important is to find the real truth in all of this, so one can make a good judgement. We value things depending on how much we understand about it. For instance cutting down trees without a second thought is easier than shooting animals, because we value it differently.
If we think that everything has equal value on earth we might take better care of it. Not cutting down more trees than necessary for survival for instance.

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: ikke ---
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---That's a pretty narrow definition.  Would mean trees aren't alive.
--- End quote ---
One could argue that for instance a tree's response to parasites can be proof of sentience

--- End quote ---



--- Quote from: Testlund ---How about this: The earth is alive. The moon is dead.  
--- End quote ---

Now you're getting in to Gaia theory

multibotlover:
I think that the best definition of life is "a system that uses energy, requires food, can grow and reproduce, and is capable of taking on darwinian evolution.

but thats just my opinion.

cliftut:
I believe that a good definition for life should be as unassumptive as possible. For instance, we do not know for certain that some form of what we might call "life" exists within energy fields, or even a matter based life form which is not composed of cells, but a crystalline or molecular-tissue based structure. I believe that a flexible definition is necessary to allow for such possibilities. The more rules our definition has, the higher the chance that a discovery in the future will force a major revision.

This in mind, I'll attempt:
'An entity with the ability to change either in structure or in behavior, this change being initiated by the entity. This change may be gradual, or take place between generations if reproduction or division is in its nature.'

Hopefully this is robust enough, without being so broad as to serve no purpose. It frees us from some of the assumptions common in many definitions of life, I think. This allows for those things currently considered to be alive, while allowing for other, possibly very different forms.

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