No, quite the contrary. Trees are considered alive and they are not conscious. WierdDave also has a point about fire, and as Cecil himself pointed in his previous column, it is often used as an example of something which possesses all the traits of something which is alive, but in actual fact is not. This raises the point that there is more to a living thing than a haphazard collection of traits. If there is not more to a living thing than a haphazard collection of traits, then there are many entities and phenomena which ought to be considered living.
If you want to retain the scope of the current definition of “living”, you must answer what it is that separates these trait-satisfying but non-living entities, from those which satisy the same traits but are considered alive.
The trouble lies in distinctions, the difference between alive and not-alive is really of no consequence. As is the distinction between good and evil. Our human minds demand that we create distinctions so that we can “understand” nature. In reality, all is connected.
Fire (here we go again) eats wood and wax, metabolizes carbon, excretes ash, inhales oxygen, gives off carbon dioxide and water, moves, grows, reproduces itself, and responds to changes in temperature, oxygen content, wind direction, and fuel.
On the other hand, trees neither eat (unless you consider photosynthesis “eating”) nor move.
Only with a very strange definition of “eat”. If I take a beaker of acid, and a beaker of base, and pour them together, have I “eaten” them?
Again, I don’t think that “metabolize” is a very apporpiate word. “Metabolize” refers to a biological process.
The term “excrete” means to release from one’s body. The term “inhale” means to bring into one’s body. Since fire has no body, how can it be said to do these things?
Again, this is a strangew definition of “move”. Other than the random motions of the molecules, none of the parts of fire moves.
[qoute]grows,
[/quote]
It’s really more that there is more fire than that the fire grows. Each combustion reaction stays the same size, and the isn’t really any sense in which the reactions form a whole.
Not really. Normally, the term “reproduce” implies that the majority of the information neede to recreate something is supplied by the agent doing the reproducing. For instance, if I were to plant a bunch of seeds, it would be more accurate to say that the plant from whgich it came reproduced itself, than to say that i reproduced the plant. In the case of fire, it is the environment that does most of the work of reproducing the fire, not the fire itself.
But the reactions originate from the environment, not the fire itself.
How is that any less eating than when my stomach acids and enzymes perform chemical reactions with the compounds I ingest, creating other compounds from them? You are making this into a matter of definition, not a factual argument.
It seems to me that a more important meaning of “excrete” means “to give off the waste produced from the metabolism of nutrients”. Fire gives off unusable waste (ash, carbon dioxide, water vapour from the catalysis of its chemical fuels.
Well, the same can be said for trees, and they’re alive.
Well, each polyp in a jellyfish (which is actually a colony of such polyps) stays roughly the same size, even though the jellyfish grows. Same could be said for any lower, colony-type lifeform.
You’ve read too much into my argument. Where did I say what you say I said? I simply said that “metabolize” is a biological process which is not appropiate when referring to fire.
Because the degree of incolvement that your body has is exteremely larger.
Ha, ha. Very funny. It was a matter of definition to begin with.
Meaning, or definition? If I metabolize some cookies, and throw away the packages that they came in, were the packages excreted?
No, trees do move. Do you know why sunflowers are called sunflowers (okay, okay, they’re not trees, but trees move as well)?
First of all, there must be some stage in which the polyp grows. Second of all, the jellyfish acts as a whole, something which fire does not.
Actually, to use the term “metabolism” in this argument (from whichever side) would be incorrect, as the definition of metabolism is: “a general term for the chemical changes of living matter.”. So to use the word metabolise, you must have a clear definition of “living” which I am not satisfied that we have…
Khrishnamurti says “to know what death is, you must first understand what life is.” Is it therefore acceptable to answer your question, papertiger, by starting from a definition of death, and to then say that life is the opposite of that definition?
Or in a short form, is death defined as the opposite of life? It might be easier to define death than life…
And NO, I’m not obsessed with death (although you might suspect that from the other thread ).
I always ended smartass questions among my old group of friends like this.
“I say I’m alive, and this concrete bench I’m sitting on isn’t. The bench can’t complain about being called unliving. Once it does, I’ll discuss the issue with it.”
As soon as that rock beings to complain about us calling it unliving, give me a ring and I’ll join back in
The trouble with death is that by definition it occurs when life ends. Since it always comes after life, (Buddhists may disagree) you can’t really define life relative to it.
And it never occurred to me that you would be obsessed with death. More of a healthy interest I’d say
I guess one of the problems with a definition that I was preparing is that one is not dead before one is alive, only after. In my mind, it is practically the same thing before you are conceived as after you are dead. I don’t like the idea of three states of being:
State 1 - not yet in existence.
State 2 - alive.
State 3 - dead.
I’d prefer to think of them as being two. Neither of which answers your OP.
Your topic has made me think about this more than I wanted to. It’s also given me the willies thinking about the grim inevitability of death. One reason more that I am insistant about protecting my right to life.
Well thanks a lot - now someone’s going to have to rock me to sleep tonight.
I don’t really think there is a state before existence whatever you call it. The same amount of matter exists in the universe now as it did from the moment it was created (you scientists feel free to correct me at any time). Therefore there is nothing “new” as such, merely re-organization of substance.
I also don’t look forward to death, but I take solace in the fact that I will never really disappear. I may, 1000 years from now, have some of my particles used as the material on captain Janeway’s chair. Or something.
And as for my soul, well thats a different story altogether!
).