h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"When you see a cow in a field and know it is alive, you don;t need to know whether it can reproduce or not"

Depends how pervy you are.

B

Interesting idea - castration = death.

F S

You just made me chortle into my you get!

I was listening to 'Material World' on Radio 4 last night. During the course of the show a couple of highly learned scientists attempted to tackle the question of 'What is life?'.

They discussed various ideas which had been used to define life, but which are now being discounted. For example, it had been thought the a reasonable quantity of water was essential to life, but there's a scientist that has recently cultivated some microbes (or summat) in an almost waterless enviroment. So that idea is quickly going out of the window.

They then discussed what other forms of life might be like, taking the much discussed silicon-based life-form as an example.

In the end they could come to no firm definition, but said, more or less, "We know what life is when we see it".


Geggs

"Interesting idea - castration = death."

Well I bcertianly know some people for whom it would constitute brain death

B

Reality is the observers view of everything based on the information recieved from outside input (the sences), the origin of which is totally dependant on where the observer believes they come from as they
will never be able to prove any different.
Therefore the definition of life as a concept is totally dependant on the observer.
(berkley ish..)

or

Everything is cause and effect from the shifting of continants to the smalles idea, a series of patterns in energy of varying complexity.
Life is a commonly occuring pattern given the right variables, in our case even giving the idea of choice when it is simply cause and effect of a scale so complex and so subtle and we don't even realise it, probably because thats not part of the pattern, cause and effect etc...

(mechanistic view)

CF

"Life, its not what I thought it was"

Indie-kid view

(or whatever the lyrics were, something to do with cow thighs as I rememeber )

On a similar topic I recently pondered how to define a human. After considering various possibilities the only statement I could fully agree with was also "You'll know one when you see one."

Apparently not ones for specific definitions, us humans - perhaps that's how we could be defined.

Saw a proggy on telly the other night about Oliver, the curiously human like chimpanzee (or humanzee as one *insisted* on calling him).
A lawyer who had owned him asked a judge (this in the USA I believe) how alike the DNA of a primate would have to be to be treated as human in a court of law. The judge replied that if there was more than a 50% match he would try for murder (eg). The guy then asked said judge if he was aware that chimpanzees were 99.something % alike in their DNA to humans. So the judge replied that if the 'right' 1% (or whatever) of DNA was changed then the chimp would be human. I think this is going to become more important as *someone8 *somewhere* is bound to cross human and other great ape at somepoint (they allegedly already have but terminated the result).

That would be a really horrible issue to untangle, Ictoan, I do hope that is something that hasn't been done.

I read a book that explored that very issue, it was fiction by Dean Koontz I think...

eunuchs . . . a species?

az

Not surprising they died out really

p.s. If it was Dean R Koontz then I hope it was fiction!

Errrr..sozzz...

Was about an ape that were crossed with a human/or had that intelligence....my powers of recall suck.....anyway...errrm

Look at that interesting spot over there....doesn't it look interesting...

I suppose it could've been a Robin Cook book.....sounds more likely now that I think about it....

I just plow thro so many diff books, that all stories get mished mashed in my head couple with my own thoughts n stuff....that well....not having a compartmentalized or any sort of thought filing order...it all gets a bit twisted in there....

blah ....

off to my interview I go......wish me luck, I need it I think... *chuckles*

good luck!

It was indeed a Dean R Koontz book. I've read it myself I was just toying
It has a great line when the blokey and girly are in her house expecting this genetically engineer ape type thing (escaped from military science area) to attack them as and trhe door bell goes. They answer it and some dodgy looking bloke with a knife tries to stick them up saying "I'm your worst nightmare!" The bloke replies "Nowhere close!" and shoots him or summats.

Can;t remember what it was called though. Not a huge fan it must be said but I have read a few of his.

thanks

L.I.F.E

Living

Indigenously

Freely

Evolving

Is it generally accepted that plants come into the 'alive' definition?
If you pluck an apple from a living tree, is the apple still 'alive'?