life and non-life...

[kotoreru]

Hmm here's all I could find on that stuff I mentioned earlier in the thread:

http://space.newscientist.com/channel/a ... -dust.html

Truth be told, it's all a bit abstract but may interest you.

[pd84]

At school, we were taught living things are those that: move, reproduce, react to stimuli, grow, respire, excrete and require nutrition.

But then just as an extra note, someone quipped that fire has all these properties so is this a living thing, blah blah...

[ragav.payne]

Okay, I think that I need to put forth the bio-philosohical version of my question.

Is consciousness/(point of view) an essential component of a living system?

May be all the living systems possess a point of view of its surroundings (We may never be able to emperically base our comments on its existence/nature/non-existence)

Anyway, where is the plant's brain? Does it have a centralized brain? Does its DNA store and process all the information that it needs to?

Anyway, why can't the presence of DNA (as information storing components) in a system make it a living being?

And why exactly is fire not a living thing? On what basis is it not qualified as a living thing? We all seem to instinctively reject the notion that fire isn't living? but what is the base for such rejection?

Cheers.

[siroma]

Here the answer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

[zx1108585]

i can't quite follow you

[titanman]

According to Freeman Dyson, who is author of "origin of life", living things have two primary characteristics: metabolism and replication.
All nonliving things do not possess either of those characteristics.
Then we can define life. But the main problem now is the nature of metabolism and replication.

[anfiosso]

I think that a living being is an organism that has all biochemical e teleonomic structures necessary for surviving. Furthermore, regarding a foetus, for example, at early points of development it couldn't be considered "life" because it doesn't even reached the phylogenic stage characteristic of its species

[anfiosso]

errata corrige "hasen't even reached"