Re: MD what is life?

From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Mon Nov 17 2003 - 07:16:57 GMT

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    Dear Trivik and Nathan,

    Inorganic crystals do NOT fit my definition of life. After having been
    created, they don't show any behavior that could produce other crystals like
    themselves. They don't reproduce THEMSELVES; they ARE reproduced.
    Same with the falling action of dominos that spreads through the line. It's
    gravity and no behavior that's 'hard-wired' in a domino that reproduces.

    Genes are part of a living entity. They cannot exist (i.e. would fall apart
    almost immediately) outside their protecting cell environment. They are part
    of the mechanism that all life (as we know it) uses to reproduce itself.

    Viruses are the lower borderline case. Their 'behavior' is extremely limited
    to some enzymatic activity that enables them to enter living cells.

    I HAVE said how living entities reproduce themselves: 'by means of
    "hard-wired" (instinctual, hormones, nerves, enzymes etc. directed) behavior
    rather than by means of copied behavior (distinction from social level) or
    motivated behavior (distinction from intellectual level)'. For this behavior
    to have the reproducing effect, interaction with external patterns of value
    is indeed necessary (some form of feeding, at least; even in the case of a
    virus, that feeds on the cell it enters).

    A cell taking out of a living body can go on to reproduce itself for some
    time in the right circumstances (the same kind of protection and feeding
    that it gets inside the body). So one could legitimately call it 'alive'. A
    gene taken out of a cell can not. It cannot 'feed' itself even if all the
    separate amino-acids it is compesed of are swimming around. Humans can
    insert it into another cell (making it part of another living entity),
    however, but that's something different from calling the gene itself alive.

    With friendly greetings,

    Wim

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