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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Diploid]
    #4219799 -

I don't necessarily agree with the scientific definition of life, but the mainstream view is that life must fit 5 criteria:

1. Growth
2. Metabolism, or transforming and storing energy and/ or mass
3. Motion (This includes internal motion, such as the function of mitochondria in cells, so the organism doesn't need to actually need to move according to our definition of motion.)
4. Reproduction.
5. Response to stimuli

There are a few problems I see with this definition, noticeably the fact that fire can be considered living while a mule cannot, but for the most part it is successful in classifying all the traits of known lifeforms.


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Ravus]
    #4219814 -

And for terrestial, known organisms, some biologists add the extra definitions that life:

1. Contains molecular components such as proteins, lipids and nucleic acids.
2. Require both energy and matter
3. Are composed of at least one cell
4. Maintain homeostasis
5. Will evolve

This is a more useful addition for our planet, and clarifies the fact that fire and stars could be considered living.

But on other planets? If life exists throughout the universe, I doubt all extraterrestial life would fit these terrestial additions.


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Ravus]
    #4219853 -

fire can be considered living while a mule cannot

Because it can't reproduce.

Did you know that recent advances in Recombinant DNA technology and recently developed restriction enzymes now make it possible to produce a viable egg containing genetic material from two same-sex parents?  :syringe:

It is now literally possible for a person to have two biological fathers and no mothers or the other way around. :whoa:

Using this technology, mules can now reproduce.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

Edited by Diploid (05/25/05 07:35 PM)

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Ravus]
    #4219925 -

Ravus said:
Quote:
It seems humans seek some kind of meaning.


Humans seek meaning for the same reason they have hope and faith. Mainly, with the way their brains are wired, having these subjective human emotions and feelings helps their survival, and when they feel hopelessness and meaninglessness, their brain is actually using this as a key to tell them something is wrong. Why do we do this? Because that's the most stable way for our brains to function based on the DNA that created us.

Quote:
What is the purpose of a virus? And if it has no purpose, why is it here?


Why do things need a purpose? How is the purpose of life any different from the purpose of a rock?

And most importantly, why do humans continuously attribute everything to having a purpose? Is this a genetic mutation that helps with our survival, but a trait that does not actually exist outside the functioning of the mind?

Quote:
And our stability may be just temporary but is life itself temporary? So far it has survived and thrived.


My goal is to live forever. So far, so good. :smirk:

Live has survived so far because you are here to witness it. If life didn't survive, you wouldn't be here to notice it didn't survive. But do you honestly think in a finite, growing, chaotic universe as our own, life can exist for eternity? Even the stars and the galaxies won't exist for eternity, so what more of life?

Quote:
It's hard to imagine everything being an accident.


Life isn't an accident anymore than a star or a planet is an accident. Life is just the result of factors that came together and by natural selection grew to become more stable. Just because God or the supernatural isn't evolved, I don't necessarily think it's an accident.


OK Ravus, It's hard for me to debate these points being mostly with out formal education. But here goes. Hope and faith may be important for survival. Did our ape ancestors rely on these for survival, and also other life forms. Is it part of the evolutionary drive? To move into new forms not just survival.

Why do things need a purpose? I don't know, but doesn't a rock have purpose? Could it be the body of earth like a skin cell is to us?

What if the purpose of life is to transcend the limitations of the universe? Maybe I didn't mean life as much as consciousness. Will everything disappear in the known universe?

You said you don't necessarily think life is an accident.

but you said this:Our stability is just a temporary coincidence of nature, and life has no real purpose other than being an accident.

Am I missing something

Interesting subject. thanks. :mushroom2:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Icelander]
    #4220055 -

In different context I used the word accident though, in terms of the fact that life may be just a coincidence of circumstances. It's not an accident because it was meant to happen based on the factors that were existing, but it may serve no purpose other than being a byproduct of those factors. Excuse my semantics, I do seem to contradict myself by using the same words in a different context while talking in the same discussion.

Does the universe have a purpose? Science can trace the evidence back to singularity, that is, the Big Bang, but where did everything in the Big Bang come from? I think that's the ultimate question, and the factor that will make or break the purpose of human existence, not because humans themselves will change, but because the universe may be looked at in a completely different way.

Then again, maybe it's just some odd quantum probability from an infinte multiverse, where every possible universe in every possible circumstance is created. Who knows? We are still primitive creatures, after all, just using the traits evolution gave us to try to acquire knowledge.


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Ravus]
    #4220078 -

Yes! :heart: :mushroom2:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Icelander]
    #4220985 -

It is odd to think that life could be spontaneously generated since it seems to defy the 3rd law of thermodynamics that states the the entropy of the universe is constantly increasing to a maximum.

Well, entropy is a measure of how disordered a system is. Basically the number of possible configurations the system has. Imagine this situation. you have 8 sugar cubes laying on a table. You can rotate these cubes to generate more possible configurations right now they have a lot of "entropy." Imagine now that you glue these 8 cubes together, you have just decreased the entropy of the system because now you can only rotate this single molecule. In addition to that you can no longer replace the location of 2 different cubes (switching them) to generate more states--you have lowered the entropy.

Now imagine the 8 cubes each represent an atom. Consider that some molecules such as enzymes contain 100s of atoms. Imagine all the states that are lost when those 100 atoms come together.

Well, entropy and chemistry is a lot more complicated than that but in the initial thought it would seem strange that pure elements would slowly evolve into anything but instead would burst into life from the great order of the universe when it was all jam-packed together before the bigbang and devolved to their current state. But more likely just some large atmospheric electrical charges or something.

(the ramblings of a madman)

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: nitroguy]
    #4221074 -

Quote:
Didn't scientists conclude that the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, etc... based on the level of understanding they had reached in their time?


No, scientists did NOT conclude that, religion concluded that and was supported by very primitive observations with absolutely nothing to back it up. The second you start getting into where actual SCIENTISTS emerged, and TESTED their theories and PROVED them, you have such people as Galileo, one of the first REAL scientists, are you going to argue with any of Galileo's findings?

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: OmEgAx1]
    #4221398 -

Ravus said:
Our genetics do not automatically give us the ability to type anymore than they give us the automatic ability to create fire, but they do create an organ necessary for survival


Said organ is not necessary for survival. It might provide increased chances of survival, but it certainly isn't necessary for survival, as tons of life without said organ will demonstrate.

Survival is not a purpose of life. Life doesn't exist to survive.

Quote:
Any belief in God we create, any faith we have, any love or unity we experience, are just ways of natural selection making our survival make more stable and assured.


So the experience of life itself is simply a process that stabilizes and assures the experience of life? :lol:

You will not find any inherent meaning or purpose in life. Life doesn't exist simply to have more probability of existing in the future. There is a process that life goes through to create more life, but that doesn't point to that process as being the ultimate motivation and purpose of life itself.

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :satansmoking:
Peace. :mushroom2:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: fireworks_god]
    #4221484 -

There is a process that life goes through to create more life, but that doesn't point to that process as being the ultimate motivation and purpose of life itself.

The words 'motivation' and 'purpose' imply intent. Life has no intent any more than a brick intends to fall when dropped. The brick falls because its environment necessitates it.

However, all life does have an overriding tendency to continue to exist and reproduce because any life that didn't have this tendency would not reach the next generation. This is natural selection at work.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

Edited by Diploid (05/26/05 05:06 AM)

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Diploid]
    #4221590 -

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=73383

that would be the 2nd law...
for a closed system, in every energy tranfer entropy will increase...

CLOSED SYSTEM...

little pockets of anti-entropic activity (organization) are possible temporarily within closed systems...
but the planet earth is not (and never has been) a "closed system"...
fwiw...

~

now, a virus is much closer in organization to a plasmid, or a "wild gene cluster"...

the true unit of life on this here planet (and to this very day, the dominant life form here) is kingdom monera - the bacteria and their allies (prokaryota)...
not only do they have the major "say" in how gaia lives (particularly since the biomass of the monerans is greater than the other 4 kingdoms combined!!!), but without prokaryotes, the eukaryotes (protista, fungi, plantae, & animalia --- the other "4 kingdoms") would not even be here --- (thanks to the brilliant hypothesizing of dr lynn margulis, it is widely accepted that many eukaryotic organelles, such as mitochondria & chloroplasts, are in fact remnants of an ancient collaboration - google: "endosymbiont theory, lynn margulis" for more info...)


--------------------
old enough to know better
not old enough to care

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: Swami]
    #4221941 -

:rotfl:

Excellent point!

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Re: Origin of Life [Re: fireworks_god]
    #4222764 -

Quote:
Said organ is not necessary for survival. It might provide increased chances of survival, but it certainly isn't necessary for survival, as tons of life without said organ will demonstrate.


As I was talking about fire and typing, the mention of the brain was that it was necessary for human survival, unless there is another organism that creates fire and types?

Of course it's not necessary for the survival of bacteria, but the technological advancements I was talking about were unique to humans, which I why I said it occured in an organ necessary survival under the implication that we were talking about humans.

Quote:
Survival is not a purpose of life. Life doesn't exist to survive.


That's true, but natural selection states simply that the life that survives, survives. And if an organism like humans has a mental purpose like survival, then it shows that by evolution, our subjective reality based on survival is a useful trait.

Life doesn't have any inherent meaning, nor will the molecules making up our body be affected by our death, but the way we're composed creates life that, through billions of years of trial and error, has the desire to survive.

Quote:
So the experience of life itself is simply a process that stabilizes and assures the experience of life?


Assures the experience of life? No, natural selection doesn't care about the experience, natural selection just created the mutations of hope and faith in our primate minds because these traits help us survive and reproduce. Those who did not get these mutations, for the most part at least, died off.

It does help to assure the continued existence of our human life, but the experience is just another way to help survival, not a result of any goal.

Quote:
You will not find any inherent meaning or purpose in life. Life doesn't exist simply to have more probability of existing in the future. There is a process that life goes through to create more life, but that doesn't point to that process as being the ultimate motivation and purpose of life itself.


I completely agree. You seem to confuse my meaning to say I'd think otherwise. I never said natural selection's goal and motivation is to create life, because natural selection simply states that the life that survives reproduces and passes on its genetic traits. This doesn't require any ultimate motivation or purpose, but rather just says that those who are not suited for life die off, and those who are suited will possibly create future generations. It's only the human mind who, in its desire to seek purpose in meaning, will attach an ego and purpose to natural selection, when really natural selection is just a self-confirming law that mortal organisms follow.


--------------------
So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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