Defining life (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 04, 2013, 14:42 (4007 days ago) @ David Turell

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?