I mean, I don’t think and metabolization is going on-no respiration, absorption is going on.
I also read that some seeds have been sprouted after incredibly long times-like 20,000 years (for some lotus seeds in Chinese lakes).
So, does the state that a seed is in equivalent to death?
When you encounter a seeming counterexample to a definition like this, the approach should not be “this violates the definition, therefore something obviously incorrect is true.” Instead, the challenge is to come up with a better definition of life that covers all of these cases. This has proved remarkably challenging.
As phrased, this is confusing - I’m assuming the first word should in fact be “is”.
And I’ll note that it’s somewhat strange to call something “dead” that never was alive. A seed was once part of a living plant, but was not itself alive.
Of course it was! Why would you think that? A seed has cells, metabolism, and as it forms in the plant, it is growing, its cells reproducing. It was most definitely originally alive, just as much as a humans sperm or egg cells are. You do not think they are dead, do you?
As to the OP’s question, I would be inclined to say no, it is not dead. Technically? The trouble is that “alive” and “dead” do not, in all contexts (and in this context in particular) have very precise, “technical” definitions. It is true that seeds that have lain dormant for many, many years differ quite a bit from most paradigmatic examples of living things, and no doubt it would be possible to gerrymander a definition of “dead” according to which long dormant seeds are dead and most other things which we normally consider to be alive are indeed alive, but by most ordinary definitions, both technical and informal, a seed that still has the potential to germinate is alive.
Incidentally, although I do not know this for certain, I very much suspect that even in long dormant seeds, metabolism at a low, very slow level, is continuing. Certainly that is the case for relatively freshly formed seeds.
As long as the seed is viable, it’s alive. Dormant, or in stasis, but there’s the spark of life waiting for the right conditions to grow a new plant.
If it can’t sprout, it’s dead.
Now see this is why the scientific definition of life seems retarded to me. For example require a cell seems rather arbitrary to me.
I think all that is needed for something to be life is it evolves and uses energy. If it’s replicated through natural selection, and has the ability to metabolize, it’s life.
Fire isn’t life because there is no structure for natural selection to act on. A neutered cat is life because it’s parents face competitive pressures to produce it, and it’s still breathing. An inert lotus seed is alive because it can still reproduce. A roasted sun flower seed damaged beyond repair so it’s dead, but tasty. A crystal is not, unless it starts to compete with other crystals for growth. Then the fittest crystals will generally out compete leading to adaptions, life.
The answer to this question might be relevant to the pro-life vs pro-choice debate.
Honestly this thread itself belongs in GD.
But given strange aeons, even death may die.
I think that the difficulty shows that we’re working in the wrong direction. In the same way that some astronomers think we should stop thinking of “planets” as a type of object, coming up with a catch-all definition of life seems counter-productive. Any definition that can be used for classification will either include items you wish to and/or exclude items that shouldn’t be. With regard to a dormant seed, this view would ignore the question as to whether the seed is “alive” or not, but rather focus on the characteristics of the seed. In this case, whether it can actually produce a viable plant.
I’m not in the field, but it would surprise me if there weren’t prominent biologists who take this view or something fairly similar to it.
Why is evolution important? A hypothetical being that can’t evolve, but can still perpetuate itself would be just as alive, wouldn’t it?
Also, your definition includes many computer viruses. Was this the intention? (Honest question: I’ve seen people argue they should be considered alive).
Seeds are said to respire (give off carbon dioxide, for example) while dormant, though at a very low rate. So - they’re alive.
Here is a wonderful paper for the OP to read that explains it all, or probably does (I started to nod off after a few paragraphs).
Most seeds do, certainly, but many do not. This is why lotus seeds are able to survive in anoxic sediments literally for millenia and germinate upon exposure to air. They simply shut down altogether.
But really, the OP is spectacularly uninteresting. Seeds er very poor contenders for dormancy. Bacterial spores will lay dormant for indefinitely, certainly for tens of thousands of years probbaly literlaly forever under the right conditions. Fungal spores will easily survive for thousands of years. Seeds just aren’t in the same league.
And no, these things are not technically dead. They are technically dormant, nothing more. Dead refers to something that was once alive and no longer is alive. Seed and spores are not dead, they are still very much alive. The life processes are simply halted.
Biological life is an ongoing chemical reaction, nothing more and nothing less. Something is considered dead only when that reaction ceases to be capable of advancing any further. A seed, in contrast, is merely dormant. The reaction can continue just fine under the correct condition, but it has temporarily halted. That’s not death. You could, at a stretch, refer to a perfectly dormant propagule as being non-living, but it is never correct to refer to it as dead.