Defining life (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Tuesday, December 03, 2013, 21:25 (4008 days ago)
No one does it well. He is a devotee' of RNA beginning.-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/12/02/why-life-does-not-really-exist/?WT_mc_id=SA_DD_20131203
Defining life
DAVID: No one does it well. He is a devotee' of RNA beginning.-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/12/02/why-life-does-not-really-exis...-Thank you for another lovely article! Jabr's main point is that one cannot draw a dividing line between life and non-life.-QUOTE: "Truthfully, that which we call life is impossible without and inseparable from what we regard as inanimate. If we could somehow see the underlying reality of our planet—to comprehend its structure on every scale simultaneously, from the microscopic to the macroscopic—we would see the world in innumerable grains of sand, a giant quivering sphere of atoms. Just as one can mold thousands of practically identical grains of sand on a beach into castles, mermaids or whatever one can imagine, the innumerable atoms that make up everything on the planet continually congregate and disassemble themselves, creating a ceaselessly shifting kaleidoscope of matter. Some of those flocks of particles would be what we have named mountains, oceans and clouds; others trees, fish and birds. Some would be relatively inert; others would be changing at inconceivable speed in bafflingly complex ways. Some would be roller coasters and others cats."-This is a wonderfully fresh way of looking at the definition problem. He's probably right ... there's no dividing line. The continual congregation and disassembly of atoms, particles (and I would add cells) is what makes up the history of our universe and our planet. Since the behaviour of particles at quantum level is apparently too weird and wonderful for anyone to understand, why should we expect to understand and define it in terms of life and non-life?
Defining life
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 15:28 (4007 days ago) @ dhw
> dhw:This is a wonderfully fresh way of looking at the definition problem. He's probably right ... there's no dividing line. The continual congregation and disassembly of atoms, particles (and I would add cells) is what makes up the history of our universe and our planet. Since the behaviour of particles at quantum level is apparently too weird and wonderful for anyone to understand, why should we expect to understand and define it in terms of life and non-life?-I reproduced here a while ago that quantum mechanics plays a vital role in photosynthesis. I keep emphasizing that QM is at the basis of our reality. And yes the article shows that the exact definition of life is not present, just as we can't really define consciousness. Emergence is the problem
Defining life
by George Jelliss 
, Crewe, Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 18:29 (4000 days ago) @ David Turell
Here is a complex article on the future of biology which considers similar issues (note it is a PDF)-http://www.johnboccio.com/courses/Physics120_2008/docs/woese.pdf-It seems to be arguing for a paradigm shift in biology, and ecology, that will square reductionism with holism and emergence in some manner analogous to quantum theory in physics.-It may all just be a pipe dream though, I suspect.
--
GPJ
Defining life
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 20:04 (4000 days ago) @ George Jelliss
George: Here is a complex article on the future of biology > which considers similar issues (note it is a PDF) > > http://www.johnboccio.com/courses/Physics120_2008/docs/woese.pdf > > It seems to be arguing for a paradigm shift in biology, and ecology, > that will square reductionism with holism and emergence > in some manner analogous to quantum theory in physics. > > It may all just be a pipe dream though, I suspect.-George, thanks again for a marveous article. And Woese, the discoverer of Archaea has much philosophic thought to offer. We must not lose sight of the fact that all of the complex cellular biochemistry we are finding is necessary for the phenomenon of life to emerge. Even if like consciousness, we have trouble understadning the dual emergences by just looking at cells.
Defining life: as emergent protein molecular property
by David Turell , Friday, May 27, 2016, 01:30 (3103 days ago) @ David Turell
This is a complex essay which I will present in parts. Part one: - http://inference-review.com/article/genes-without-prominence - "The modern synthesis, we now understand, does not explain trans-generational epigenetic inheritance, consciousness, and niche construction.9 It is possible that the concept of the gene and the claim that evolution depends on genetic diversity may both need to be modified or replaced. - *** - "It has been commonplace to understand the second law of thermodynamics as suggesting that increasing entropy inevitably implies increasing disorder. Evolution demonstrates the reverse. Organisms evolve to become more ordered and complex, rather than less. Erwin Schrödinger thus suggested that life feeds on negative entropy by exporting entropy to its environment. - *** - "In dynamical system theory, an attractor is a stationary state of a system toward which those states that are within a basin of attraction converge. Although this makes an attractor stable under small perturbations, larger perturbations can push the system to a variant attractor. There is no continuum of stable states between attractors. Transitions are true saltations: jumps or switches. Gradualism is not an option. - *** - "The mathematical biologist Robert Rosen concluded that living systems are complex systems that are closed to efficient causes. They are systems capable of self-regulation. Machines, on the other hand, are systems open to efficient causes. Such systems can be reduced to their component parts and reassembled. Complex systems that yield emergent properties cannot. Only the dynamic cell model satisfies Rosen's conditions for living systems. - *** - "DNA is essential to the functioning of the cell. A great many resources are devoted to maintaining its integrity. DNA serves as an inert database to enable the cell to provide its progeny with necessary peptides. These are the starting materials that when folded and activated become the cell's work horses. - *** - "The cellular phenotype is an emergent property of the cell. Emergence has proved a controversial concept, but simple chemical reactions provide examples. A mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen molecules at room temperature is clearly different from the product of the energy-induced reaction that forms ammonia. ( Comment: two gases become one) - *** "Some proteins catalyze reactions, but many, as Dennis Bray has observed, govern the transfer and processing of information. Because of their high degree of interconnection, systems of interacting proteins act as neural networks trained by evolution to respond appropriately to patterns of extracellular stimuli. - "Even primitive microbes exhibit purposeful behavior, such as quorum sensing, chemotaxis, and phototaxis. " (my bold) - Please note the above boldings. Life requires the transfer of information using protein molecules The author presents my idea that protein molecular reactions are equivalent to neural activity. Very clear! More coming as I have time.
Defining life: as emergent protein molecular property
by David Turell , Friday, May 27, 2016, 04:50 (3103 days ago) @ David Turell
Continuing with part 2:-http://inference-review.com/article/genes-without-prominence " Testing to see how a bacterium responds to previously un-encountered environmental conditions, Akiko Kashiwagi et al. equipped an E. coli bacterium with a plasmid containing two operons enabling the cell to exploit two nutrient sources.82 Each operon suppressed the other if deployed. Fluorescent assays indicated which operon was active. When confronted by a major environmental change, the cell, the authors assume, has to find and adopt a new signal transduction route using natural selection. In this case, the bacterium was given the solution that natural selection might have found, but no signal transduction route. On switching the bacteria from one nutrient source to the other, metabolic activity initially dropped dramatically, but after an hour or so increased again, signaling that the alternative nutrient was being metabolized. The authors concluded that the bacterium was able to select between attractors each adapted to the appropriate nutrient conditions much more rapidly than conventional theory would predict.-"There is no role for natural selection here.-***-"Mauno Rönkkö has developed a virtual ecosystem based on information-bearing particles.85 Each particle—whether a speck of the soil, grass, rain, a worm or beetle, or a scent emitted by grass—carries information that enables it to interact with other particles in highly specific time-dependent ways. Running the full sequence of particle interactions animates the organisms in the ecosystem. In principle, cells in multicellular organisms could carry such information in their phenotypes. That information specifies associations with other cells, and from it emerges the organism's form.86 Diversity in biological form can, therefore, be seen as a result of variation in cellular phenotype, derived from protein chemistry.-***-"Consider now the ecosystem. All organisms evolve in the context of an ecosystem and each influences the other. Evolution is not a passive process. In the words of Annila, “everything depends on everything else,” and outcomes are therefore non-linear.-"Evolution is often seen as a struggle for survival among species. Darwin's third chapter in the Origin is, after all, entitled “Struggle for Existence.” But if a stable ecosystem is an attractor state, as I would propose, predation cannot be on the only guarantor of its stability. A steady state between competitive and cooperative behavior is inescapable. Cooperation in nature is sometimes called symbiosis. ( my bold) African acacias, for example, are able to produce tannin. Tannin is toxic to mammals such as kudus and giraffes. Overgrazed acacia trees release ethylene, a plant hormone that stimulates trees downwind to produce protective tannin.-"The South African bird, the honeyguide, seems to cooperate with other species by showing them the location of bee colonies...Beeswax is a potent free energy source, but honeyguides are almost unique in being able to metabolize it.-"According to Claire Spottiswoode, the honeyguide is also a highly virulent brood parasite. Honeyguide chicks are reared by a species that neither cooperates with partners nor consumes beeswax...But there is another interesting issue here: how do honeyguide chicks know how to behave in partnership? How do they know that beeswax is good to eat? They apparently are not taught by their parents, who abandon them as soon as the egg is laid.-"It is a puzzle to Spottiswoode as well.-Comment: Note my bold. This is an example of balance of nature. All symbiosis is part of the balance. I suggest plowing through the entire article. Neo-Darwinism is completely incomplete. The honeyguide chicks are an example of an unexplained wonder of nature, perhaps God's intervention.
Defining life: as emergent protein molecular property
Again I will select quotes:-QUOTE: "The mathematical biologist Robert Rosen concluded that living systems are complex systems that are closed to efficient causes. They are systems capable of self-regulation. […] Only the dynamic cell model satisfies Rosen's conditions for living systems.”-The dynamic ability of cells/cell communities to self-regulate is the essence of my own hypothesis concerning the whole process of evolution.-QUOTE: "Some proteins catalyze reactions, but many, as Dennis Bray has observed, govern the transfer and processing of information. 	 Because of their high degree of interconnection, systems of interacting proteins act as neural networks trained by evolution to respond appropriately to patterns of extracellular stimuli. "Even primitive microbes exhibit purposeful behavior, such as quorum sensing, chemotaxis, and phototaxis. " -DAVID: … Life requires the transfer of information using protein molecules. The author presents my idea that protein molecular reactions are equivalent to neural activity.-And he presents my idea that even primitive microbes behave purposefully. And autonomously, as confirmed by the important experiment below:-QUOTE: “The authors concluded that the bacterium was able to select between attractors each adapted to the appropriate nutrient conditions much more rapidly than conventional theory would predict.”-This was a test “to see how a bacterium responds to previously un-encountered environmental conditions.” You are therefore faced with a stark choice: either your God preprogrammed this selection 3.8 billion years ago, or he saw what Akikio Kashiwagi was up to and stepped into the laboratory to guide the bacterium, or the bacterium worked out its own solution autonomously. -QUOTE: “Evolution is often seen as a struggle for survival among species. Darwin's third chapter in the Origin is, after all, entitled “Struggle for Existence.” But if a stable ecosystem is an attractor state, as I would propose, predation cannot be on the only guarantor of its stability. A steady state between competitive and cooperative behavior is inescapable. Cooperation in nature is sometimes called symbiosis.”!-Margulis got there 30 years ago: “The view of evolution as a chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of Darwin's notion of "survival of the fittest," dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking. Life forms multiplied and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them.” (Microsmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)) -David's comment: This is an example of balance of nature. All symbiosis is part of the balance. […] The honeyguide chicks are an example of an unexplained wonder of nature, perhaps God's intervention.-Of course symbiosis entails balance. Unfortunately, your “balance of nature” has hitherto entailed a convoluted attempt to explain why your God specially “guided” all the innovations and natural wonders of evolution to enable some organisms to eat while others (99% of them) went extinct. Perhaps we can forget that now, though I don't know why God would have to intervene and “guide” the chicks to the beeswax. Is it not possible that certain instincts are passed on by cell memory?
Defining life: as emergent protein molecular property
by David Turell , Friday, May 27, 2016, 19:12 (3102 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Again I will select quotes: > > QUOTE: "The mathematical biologist Robert Rosen concluded that living systems are complex systems that are closed to efficient causes. They are systems capable of self-regulation. […] Only the dynamic cell model satisfies Rosen's conditions for living systems.” > > The dynamic ability of cells/cell communities to self-regulate is the essence of my own hypothesis concerning the whole process of evolution.-Self-regulation boils down to a feedback loop of regulatory organic molecules reacting with one after another to achieve the right levels of production or whatever.->> DAVID: … Life requires the transfer of information using protein molecules. The author presents my idea that protein molecular reactions are equivalent to neural activity. > > dhw: And he presents my idea that even primitive microbes behave purposefully. And autonomously, as confirmed by the important experiment below: > > QUOTE: “The authors concluded that the bacterium was able to select between attractors each adapted to the appropriate nutrient conditions much more rapidly than conventional theory would predict.”-All through molecular reactions which control processes and act just like the equivalent of neural activity, as the author states. > > dh: This was a test “to see how a bacterium responds to previously un-encountered environmental conditions.” You are therefore faced with a stark choice: either your God preprogrammed this selection 3.8 billion years ago, or he saw what Akikio Kashiwagi was up to and stepped into the laboratory to guide the bacterium, or the bacterium worked out its own solution autonomously.-The bacteria just used an available alternative pathway. This has been shown over and over in Lenski's E. coli work. -> > David's comment: This is an example of balance of nature. All symbiosis is part of the balance. […] The honeyguide chicks are an example of an unexplained wonder of nature, perhaps God's intervention. > > dhw: Of course symbiosis entails balance....I don't know why God would have to intervene and “guide” the chicks to the beeswax. Is it not possible that certain instincts are passed on by cell memory?-Agreed. Very possibly instinct.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
by David Turell , Thursday, October 22, 2020, 18:37 (1493 days ago) @ David Turell
Life does not allow for reductionism conclusions:
http://nautil.us/issue/92/frontiers/why-physics-cant-tell-us-what-life-is?mc_cid=ab3f23...
"As we have gained an ever more accurate picture of how life’s tiniest and simplest building blocks fit together to form the whole, it has become increasingly tempting to imagine that biology’s toughest puzzles may only be solved once we figure out how to tackle them on physics’ terms.
***
"Put another way, wouldn’t any proposed explanation for the emergence of life have to break it all down into a series of rationalized steps, where each next one follows sensibly and predictably from the last? If so, how is that not the same thing as saying we want to reduce life to a choreographed performance directed by a simple, calculable set of known physical rules?
"There’s no question that molecular biology has its own long and venerable history as a hard science in its own right. Thanks to countless experiments on molecules, cells, tissues, and whole organisms, it is now abundantly clear that the marvelously diverse functional capabilities of a living thing all have sound bases in the physical properties of their material parts.
"However, this is not to say that reductionism reigns; on the contrary, the “more is different” idea of emergent properties rears its head everywhere in the study of how life works.
***
" Life is a grab bag of different pieces, some of whose physical properties are easier to predict mechanistically than others, and it is certainly the case that at least some of the factors that matter a great deal to how a living thing works will fall into the category of highly non-universal emergent properties that are impossible to derive from first principles.
"At base, this challenge will always keep popping up, because talking in physical terms is never the same thing as talking in biological ones, and so biologically important questions are not picked for their physical tractability. Instead, biological and physical ways of talking ground themselves in very different conceptual spaces.
***
"In short, biology could not have been invented without the preexisting concept of life to inspire it, and all it needed to get going was for someone to realize that there were things to be discovered by reasoning scientifically about things that were alive. This means, though, that biology most certainly is not founded on mathematics in the way that physics is. Discovering that plants need sunlight to grow, or that fish will suffocate when taken out of water, requires no quantification of anything whatsoever. Of course, we could learn more by measuring how much sunlight the plant got, or timing how long it takes for the fish-out-of-water to expire. But the basic empirical law in biological terms only concerns itself with what conditions will enable or prevent thriving, and what it means to thrive comes from our qualitative and holistic judgment of what it looks like to succeed at being alive. If we are honest with ourselves, the ability to make this judgment was not taught to us by scientists, but comes from a more common kind of knowledge: We are alive ourselves, and constantly mete out life and death to bugs and flowers in our surroundings. Science may help us to discover new ways to make things live or die, but only once we tell the scientists how to use those words. We did not know any physics when we invented the word “life,” and it would be strange if physics only now began suddenly to start dictating to us what the word means.
Comment: The author's point is simple. Life is a emergent event=, which cannot be explained by reductionism and that applies to all thought about the origin of life.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
by David Turell , Thursday, October 22, 2020, 19:39 (1493 days ago) @ David Turell
Comment: The author's point is simple. Life is a emergent event=, which cannot be explained by reductionism and that applies to all thought about the origin of life.
Who is Jeremy England:
http://nautil.us/issue/92/frontiers/the-physicists-new-book-of-life?mc_cid=ab3f23e2c9&a...
"He is a biochemistry graduate who became an MIT assistant professor in physics when he was 29 years old. He is an ordained rabbi. He is the grandson of Holocaust survivors. He is a descendant of the first life-form on Earth. He can also be described as an assemblage of atoms that exhibits complex, life-like behavior. England might describe himself as one of the many dissipators of energy in the universe—this, he says, seems to be a useful way to answer the question that humans have asked for so many millennia: What is life, and how did it arise?
"This question—and England’s answer—form the basis of his new book Every Life Is On Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origin of Living Things, which explores the idea that burning up energy is the base activity of life. But England has no simple, neat tale to tell: This is a complex, multilayered subject, and must be treated as more than a scientific issue, he says. That’s why Every Life Is On Fire daringly brings ideas from the Hebrew Scriptures and uses them to unpack the science. Cultural and religious traditions have long been exploring this territory, he says, and can complement scientific angles on the question of where we ultimately came from. If we really want to understand ourselves, he suggests, we’ll need more than science.
***
"Energy harvesting is central to your ideas. You suggest a key aspect of life’s emergence is down to structures that adapt to their environment by dissipating energy. Can you elaborate on that?
"Imagine I have a collection of matter under the influence of an environment. The environment is essentially sources of energy that are kicking the matter and knocking into it and allowing it to change shape. I’m interested in which configurations of that matter will be likely to exist at some point in the future. That likelihood depends, in part, on how much extra energy was absorbed and dissipated on the way. Over the course of the whole history of the system, highly dissipative histories are going to lead to highly likely outcomes.
***
"What’s the general idea of dissipative adaptation?
"There’s a feedback process that’s positive: I end up in a particular place because I was in a state in my past that was good at absorbing energy and it carried me irreversibly in a certain direction that I can’t go back from. It left its mark. So the general idea with dissipative adaptation is that the current state of the system holds the signature of how I had to be in some special state in my past to absorb a lot of energy. That helped me change my shape in consequential ways. Sometimes that leads to growing energy absorption over time, and sometimes it leads to extinction of energy absorption over time. And both of those things can leave very noticeable fingerprints that are different aspects of lifelike behavior.
***
"I’m a practicing religious Jew—I’m an ordained Orthodox rabbi—and I care very deeply about these things. So I would feel foolish putting the scientific ideas out there but not making my own comment about a larger conversation that includes more perspectives on what some of this could mean. When I decided to write this book, I quickly realized I wanted to go and look in the Torah and see if I can find a commentary that responds to what I’m already thinking about with the science. I certainly think that it’s possible to contemplate the boundary between life and not-life from that perspective, and the text, I would argue, clearly contains such a contemplation."
Comment: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
QUOTE: Life is a grab bag of different pieces, some of whose physical properties are easier to predict mechanistically than others, and it is certainly the case that at least some of the factors that matter a great deal to how a living thing works will fall into the category of highly non-universal emergent properties that are impossible to derive from first principles.
DAVID: The author's point is simple. Life is a emergent event=, which cannot be explained by reductionism and that applies to all thought about the origin of life.
A very stimulating article. If I were a cynic, I might point out that you can hardly be more reductionist than to claim that all the complexities of life can be explained by the existence of a single immaterial conscious mind that came from nowhere and knows everything and simply did it. But I am not a great supporter of –isms, trapped though I am in my agnosticism!
DAVID: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.
That is simply another way of saying that living organisms need food. I can’t imagine that anyone on this planet would disagree.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
by David Turell , Friday, October 23, 2020, 18:12 (1492 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: Life is a grab bag of different pieces, some of whose physical properties are easier to predict mechanistically than others, and it is certainly the case that at least some of the factors that matter a great deal to how a living thing works will fall into the category of highly non-universal emergent properties that are impossible to derive from first principles.
DAVID: The author's point is simple. Life is a emergent event=, which cannot be explained by reductionism and that applies to all thought about the origin of life.
dhw: A very stimulating article. If I were a cynic, I might point out that you can hardly be more reductionist than to claim that all the complexities of life can be explained by the existence of a single immaterial conscious mind that came from nowhere and knows everything and simply did it. But I am not a great supporter of –isms, trapped though I am in my agnosticism!
A gross misuse of the word reductionism which is used in this discussion as condemning the scientific approach of finding every part and how it works as if that explains where it came from and how it really works. All the approach shows in biochemistry is amazing complexity of design, raising the issue of how is the designer?
DAVID: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.dhw: That is simply another way of saying that living organisms need food. I can’t imagine that anyone on this planet would disagree.
Of course not. I was really referring to the entire article against reductionism.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
QUOTE: Life is a grab bag of different pieces, some of whose physical properties are easier to predict mechanistically than others, and it is certainly the case that at least some of the factors that matter a great deal to how a living thing works will fall into the category of highly non-universal emergent properties that are impossible to derive from first principles.
DAVID: The author's point is simple. Life is a emergent event=, which cannot be explained by reductionism and that applies to all thought about the origin of life.
dhw: A very stimulating article. If I were a cynic, I might point out that you can hardly be more reductionist than to claim that all the complexities of life can be explained by the existence of a single immaterial conscious mind that came from nowhere and knows everything and simply did it. But I am not a great supporter of –isms, trapped though I am in my agnosticism!
DAVID: A gross misuse of the word reductionism which is used in this discussion as condemning the scientific approach of finding every part and how it works as if that explains where it came from and how it really works. All the approach shows in biochemistry is amazing complexity of design, raising the issue of how is the designer?
I assume you meant “who” is the designer. I sort of agree that I have misused the word, but the argument is the same. What have you done? You have analysed every part and how it works, and then you say “An unknown, unknowable mind which has no source but has been superintelligent for ever and ever did it”, as if that explained where it came from and how it really works.
DAVID: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.
dhw: That is simply another way of saying that living organisms need food. I can’t imagine that anyone on this planet would disagree.
DAVID: Of course not. I was really referring to the entire article against reductionism.
Sorry, I thought you were referring to the energy supply you keep bringing up as ecosystems, and to the fact that all life needs energy.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
by David Turell , Saturday, October 24, 2020, 18:41 (1491 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: Life is a grab bag of different pieces, some of whose physical properties are easier to predict mechanistically than others, and it is certainly the case that at least some of the factors that matter a great deal to how a living thing works will fall into the category of highly non-universal emergent properties that are impossible to derive from first principles.
DAVID: The author's point is simple. Life is a emergent event=, which cannot be explained by reductionism and that applies to all thought about the origin of life.
dhw: A very stimulating article. If I were a cynic, I might point out that you can hardly be more reductionist than to claim that all the complexities of life can be explained by the existence of a single immaterial conscious mind that came from nowhere and knows everything and simply did it. But I am not a great supporter of –isms, trapped though I am in my agnosticism!
DAVID: A gross misuse of the word reductionism which is used in this discussion as condemning the scientific approach of finding every part and how it works as if that explains where it came from and how it really works. All the approach shows in biochemistry is amazing complexity of design, raising the issue of who is the designer?
dhw: I assume you meant “who” is the designer. I sort of agree that I have misused the word, but the argument is the same. What have you done? You have analysed every part and how it works, and then you say “An unknown, unknowable mind which has no source but has been superintelligent for ever and ever did it”, as if that explained where it came from and how it really works.
The logic is encapsulated in the presentations of ID, which I assume you have assiduously avoided. The design is so complex it requires a designing mind. They never refer to it as God.
DAVID: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.dhw: That is simply another way of saying that living organisms need food. I can’t imagine that anyone on this planet would disagree.
DAVID: Of course not. I was really referring to the entire article against reductionism.
dhw: Sorry, I thought you were referring to the energy supply you keep bringing up as ecosystems, and to the fact that all life needs energy.
Ecosystems and food supply explain why the bush of life is so big.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
dhw: A very stimulating article. If I were a cynic, I might point out that you can hardly be more reductionist than to claim that all the complexities of life can be explained by the existence of a single immaterial conscious mind that came from nowhere and knows everything and simply did it. But I am not a great supporter of –isms, trapped though I am in my agnosticism!
DAVID: A gross misuse of the word reductionism which is used in this discussion as condemning the scientific approach of finding every part and how it works as if that explains where it came from and how it really works. All the approach shows in biochemistry is amazing complexity of design, raising the issue of who is the designer?
dhw: I assume you meant “who” is the designer. I sort of agree that I have misused the word, but the argument is the same. What have you done? You have analysed every part and how it works, and then you say bbb“An unknown, unknowable mind which has no source but has been superintelligent for ever and ever did it”bb, as if that explained where it came from and how it really works.
DAVID: The logic is encapsulated in the presentations of ID, which I assume you have assiduously avoided. The design is so complex it requires a designing mind. They never refer to it as God.
I didn’t either, in this instance. I described what sort of mind I think you understand as the designer. Does this explain where life came from and how it really works? Of course it doesn’t. Give that mind any name you like, it is still a nebulous concept just as mysterious as the source of life and how it works!
DAVID: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.
dhw: That is simply another way of saying that living organisms need food. I can’t imagine that anyone on this planet would disagree.
DAVID: Of course not. I was really referring to the entire article against reductionism.
dhw: Sorry, I thought you were referring to the energy supply you keep bringing up as ecosystems, and to the fact that all life needs energy.
DAVID: Ecosystems and food supply explain why the bush of life is so big.
Any ecosystem and food supply is as big as the creatures that are part of it. Millions of ecosystems have come and gone, so what bush of life are you talking about? The whole history of life? Yes, the fact that there were millions of ecosystems that came and went explains why the whole bush of life past and present was/is so big. Or do you mean the current bush? Yes, the current bush is big, but as you have so rightly said, “extinct life plays no role in current time”.
Defining life: reductionist physics does not work
by David Turell , Sunday, October 25, 2020, 18:58 (1490 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The logic is encapsulated in the presentations of ID, which I assume you have assiduously avoided. The design is so complex it requires a designing mind. They never refer to it as God.
dhw: I didn’t either, in this instance. I described what sort of mind I think you understand as the designer. Does this explain where life came from and how it really works? Of course it doesn’t. Give that mind any name you like, it is still a nebulous concept just as mysterious as the source of life and how it works!
Still as you avoid it, logic requires a designing mind.
DAVID: I love his approach!!! Note the emphasis on the energy supply which I constantly bring up as ecosystems. Available energy drives life.dhw: That is simply another way of saying that living organisms need food. I can’t imagine that anyone on this planet would disagree.
DAVID: Of course not. I was really referring to the entire article against reductionism.
dhw: Sorry, I thought you were referring to the energy supply you keep bringing up as ecosystems, and to the fact that all life needs energy.
DAVID: Ecosystems and food supply explain why the bush of life is so big.
dhw: Any ecosystem and food supply is as big as the creatures that are part of it. Millions of ecosystems have come and gone, so what bush of life are you talking about? The whole history of life? Yes, the fact that there were millions of ecosystems that came and went explains why the whole bush of life past and present was/is so big. Or do you mean the current bush? Yes, the current bush is big, but as you have so rightly said, “extinct life plays no role in current time”.
Finally presenting my statement about time relationships in the proper context.
Defining life: no current solution
by David Turell , Tuesday, March 09, 2021, 21:07 (1355 days ago) @ David Turell
The author wonders why:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-life-its-vast-diversity-defies-easy-definition-2...
"With scientists adrift in an ocean of definitions, philosophers rowed out to offer lifelines.
"Some tried to soothe the debate, assuring the scientists they could learn to live with the abundance. We have no need to zero in on the One True Definition of Life, they argued, because working definitions are good enough. NASA can come up with whatever definition helps them build the best machine for searching for life on other planets and moons. Physicians can use a different one to map the blurry boundary that sets life apart from death.
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"In 2011, Trifonov reviewed 123 definitions of life. Each was different, but the same words showed up again and again in many of them. Trifonov analyzed the linguistic structure of the definitions and sorted them into categories. Beneath their variations, Trifonov found an underlying core. He concluded that all the definitions agreed on one thing: life is self‐reproduction with variations.
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"Some philosophers have suggested that we need to think more carefully about how we give a word like life its meaning. Instead of building definitions first, we should start by thinking about the things we’re trying to define. We can let them speak for themselves.
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"The Lund researchers found that they could sort things pretty well into the living and the nonliving without getting tied up in an argument over the perfect definition of life. They propose that we can call something alive if it has a number of properties that are associated with being alive. It doesn’t have to have all those properties, nor does it even need exactly the same set found in any other living thing. Family resemblances are enough.
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"As a philosopher, Cleland recognized that the scientists were making a mistake. Their error didn’t have to do with determinate attributes or some other fine philosophical point understood only by a few logicians. It was a fundamental blunder that got in the way of the science itself. Cleland laid out the nature of this mistake in a paper, and in 2001 she traveled to Washington, D.C., to deliver it at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She stood up before an audience made up mostly of scientists, and told them it was pointless to try to find a definition of life.
"Fortunately, some people who heard Cleland talk thought she was onto something. She began collaborating with astrobiologists to explore the implications of her ideas. Over the course of two decades she published a series of papers, culminating in a book, The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life.
"The trouble that scientists had with defining life had nothing to do with the particulars of life’s hallmarks such as homeostasis or evolution. It had to do with the nature of definitions themselves — something that scientists rarely stopped to consider. “Definitions,” Cleland wrote, “are not the proper tools for answering the scientific question ‘what is life?’
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"Life is different. It is not the sort of thing that can be defined simply by linking together concepts. As a result, it’s futile to search for a laundry list of features that will turn out to be the real definition of life. “We don’t want to know what the word life means to us,” Cleland said. “We want to know what life is.” And if we want to satisfy our desire, Cleland argues, we need to give up our search for a definition."
Comment: The bold is the real point. We recognize what is living, and we can study it. It is like The famous quote from Supreme court Justice Powell: "I know pornography when I see it, but I cannot define it."