Hey, I’m with the guy with all the 9s in his monicker. . .although I, of course, don’t know the subject like he does.
I think we should point out to the politicians and bureaucrats that, if viruses ain’t alive, why the devil should those biologers be getting all those grants of public money to study them thingies, huh? And if nanotechnologists are starting to build gismos that can march into biological cell structures and diddle things, oughtn’t the chemists to take some of that on down to shuffling amino acids? And then the software types could march in with their McAfee or Norton sort of virus-zapping algorithms. And then, if the biologers don’t then claim viruses as part of their menagerie, the latter can attack with Trojan Horses (Equus troyiani, or whatever) and take over the former’s scope of science.
Yes, it seems to me that viruses are much more attached to the ideas of life than to less complex chemistry of proclaimed non-life, although I wasn’t aware they could be crystallized. When they’re “crystallized”, do they exhibit any of their characteristic odd shapes? If so, then I would wonder what, exactly, the definition of crystallization ought to be.
My, probably older and more abridged, Amer. Her. dictionary (2nd Coll Ed, 1982), defines life as:
- The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, response to stimuli, and reproduction.
OK, ya wanna be that way, howdaya define death? Oh:
- The act of dying; termination of life.
The circles are getting shorter radii all the time.
The death of cells were mentioned in some above posts. One would kind of wonders what really constitutes the “death”, then, of a cell. Like we used to claim people and animals kicked off when their tickers stopped, but now we usually talk about brain death. Well, I ain’t seen either tickers or thinkers in biological cells.
And, oh yeah, that term, inanimate:
- Not having the qualities associated with active, living organisms; not animate.
animate –adj. 1. Possessing life; living.
So none of these definitions are very operational. . .at least not in terms of physics and chemistry, as 9999er points out.
I agree, in that I think that once matter is configured complexly enough that it is able to change form in a more complex way than the comparatively uniform way that occurs in the case of crystallization, it should be categorized by a term that would include what we now term life. Granted, you would probably want to have a term also for the more restricted variety of such a beast as maintains its own DNA or something similar with which to replicate.
The Burrito says:
I think you’re talking here about CA.US’s prisons. They’re composed of cells. They keep reproducing at a rate higher than almost any colony of their species in the world. And they react with their surroundings – very much in the way of sustenance, i.e., for numerous 50,000-some-odd-population cities that live off them.
Vestal Blue:
So are viruses carbon-based “organisms” but not life forms? Each of those requirements can be sufficiently broadly defined to include viruses, don’t you think? The fact that a virus must get some help from a higher “living” organization/organism to procreate shouldn’t contradict that fact that it does “procreate” in this way.
But Blue somehow killed, i.e, de-animatized, let alone de-animated, (read, deadicated or made dead) his :rolleyes: Was that by checking ‘Disable Smilies’? Hopefully, mine here has a living cell beating for it, and it will replicate all over cyberspace.
And, well, I see that Cartooniverse, the sunshine-shedder, (Is that perverse-funnies) is raining on the parade of life with his glee in entropy’s finally quelling all these hopping, soul-bearing widgets.
Ray (What hath rotted God?)
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” – Steven Weinberg, Physicist
