Bio 103 Week Two: Life? (and science?)

Our first lab required that we look at things that are familiar to us as if they were foreign in order to describe and separate the vegetation we examined into categories. This got me thinking about classification not only in science but in our daily lives. It seems to me that while classification makes things easier, grouping things together, on the basis of like characteristics, into boxes allows humans to more easily study and explore the complex world around them. Yet, simplification is not always a good thing. In class we attempted to find a single or set of characteristics that distinguish living from non-living organisms, yet we found this to be impossible. When humans try to fit everything into an established and understandable box we always seem to run into problems. Yet, humans also seem to need to categorize things in order for our brains to process, think about and understand them. If we try to find clear cut lines we may be over-simplifying but if we don’t' draw any lines at all how can we possibly look at/compare/understand anything? How do we reconcile our tendency to categorize with the inaccuracy of doing so?

Again the things that I have taken to be of absolute certainty are now being put into question.  Like many of my peers if I had been asked what is life a week ago, i would have simply answered that life is anything thats alive and people would have propably taken that as an anawer.  I guess i realized how little we really question, and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

But I also wonder the way I use to think of life everyone thought of it the same way and I really didn't have to explain myself when I said that life is something that's a live and if that is the case, then i Wonder if going through all this trouble in trying to truly define necessary.  What Im trying to say exactly is by trying to emcompass all these different characteristics about life when we describe it, are we then not making sense at all. 

Prior to our class discussions, life to me was one of those words that you couldn't define without using the word in the definition. Obviously my life is different than that of a fruit fly who may live to see several hours while comparably, I may flourish for several years. What abouit a tree that spends hundreds of years in the same spot while I spend the duration of my much shorter "life" with the mobility to wander the planet. When class concluded on Friday we had successfully established a definition that encompassed all the different varieties of life, and I was satisfied. But now I wonder whether or not our definition is too broad. Can something be alive but not have life? Are those that are brain dead or vegetative alive? Is an embryo alive (from the moment of conception)? Is there something or someone that we've overlooked?

I found that identifying and classifying life was a more difficult task than I would have ever guessed. Not only is there not any one phrase or word which can sum it up but also in finding a collection of words to describe it there are exceptions.

Describing something as being "alive" may seem simple to do but it really just isn't. The discussion we had about our new way of thinking of the scientific method plays into this discussion because of the "crack". Because people have different views and background their own determining factor of whether something is alive or dead will differ.

Thus the description of life and what needs to be present for something to be alive cannot be simplified into one word or phrase and must be acollection of descriptions that work together and allow for exceptions.

random thought:

it was interesting how during our first lab in finding all the different types of plants, a majority of the groups chose to classify or group the different plants according to shape and size.

is it inherent in humans to always look to some sort of size/spatial scale when it comes to defining differences? and is the human sense of spatial scale distorted because of subjectivity? is it also distorted because we are all different sizes?

In class this week, we tried to explain what life is. Although I have many questions I think I agree with this way of thinking about life. In primary schools, we are taught that life are classified between animals and plants with different branches within them. Categorizing living things as:

• bounded (by skin,hair etc),
• being energy dependent (to move, work, grow, maintain etc),
• having an improbable assembly,
• semi-homeostatic,
• semi-autonomous and
• reproduces with variation;

allows us to think of the possibility that there may be life elsewhere.

I think this list is an excellent list for us to continue our disscussions in class but it may/can change in the future. The idea that science is not the Truth, allows us to believe that we ourselves are truly scientists. Everywhere we go, the places we travel, our relatives' heritage; allows us to have a broad range of observations to create our own stories.

There are just so many layers and things to acknolwedge when investigating life. While thinking about the different disturbances we human beings overcome, I came across simply putting your face in water. During this time your body automatically reacts and forces you to hold your breath. Now this subtle resistance may be misinterpreted for the never-ending struggle to suvive in this world. If so, are there organisms who just live, lacking purpose in life? Are there purpose in life living? This all sounds too familiar to us.

You'd think it'd be easy to classify organisms that have never been documented before. For the lab, the organisms were all from a little patch off the paved road, I can't even begin to think about the entire Galapogos island. It's mindboggoling the amount of detail and consideration you have to put when categorizing the organisms. There's Certainly a lot of responsibility in the hands of a scientist.

The class discussions that have been held so far have been very interesting in nature, especially the discussion on what defines life.  I realized going into the conversation that there was not going to be a definite answer but at the same time I did not expect the 'answer' to be so complex.  It is amazing how a living thing is made of up of a collection of properties.  For instance, one living object may breath, move, and die, but it can't reproduce.  Also, the idea of a living thing as an improbable assembly seemed to make more sense of the characteristics of a living thing.

Our discussion on Wednesday's class about Langston's ant and whether or not it is alive as well struck me because I still can't decide whether or not it is alive.  After making some conclusions, one that stuck with me was the idea that maybe there isn't a sharp distinction between living and non-living things.  I believe that with the observations made in class in correlation with those of other biologists, one day a more concrete definition of what life is may form. 

So the whole time that we were discussing "what is life?" in class, my mind kept turning to one topic: viruses.

Because no one can really decide whether or not those little particles are considered "alive." Yeah, they have genetic material (improbable assembly?), yeah, they reproduce (only in a host cell, but reproduce none-the-less), and, to a limited degree, they respond to changes in the environment when inside an infected cell.

But viruses have no cellular composition and they can't metabolise on their own.

If viruses were considered "alive," would that change everyone's view of life? Would other seemingly "non-living" particles, like prions, also be considered candidates for "life?"

I'm just curious about other people's opinions and ideas. Does anyone lean one way or the other?

I was thankful that in class, even after we defined "life," we agreed that doing so still creates a set of problems (e.g., questions about where these things come from, etc). Reading the suggested blog topic for this week,  I was reminded of another definition and the set of problems this thinking creates. Over the summer I was talking with my parents and some of their friends (because adults are awesome too) about art/music.  One of my parents friends is an art historian and owns an art gallery, and he said that he has no idea what else can be done in art because it's all been done. I agreed at the time, and felt similarly about music (which I think came to its "it's all been done" moment John Cage "wrote" "4:33'', which is four minutes and 33 seconds of total silence and yet still considered music. Hilarious).

But today, our discussion in class led me to a new thought. We said that the definition of life should always be changing because of all the questions it creates. Likewise, I think the definitions/genres of art and music should always be open to change. I may see something that I don't think is music (a reexamination of "4:33", perhaps?) or art, but asking questions - where does rhythm come from? what is the definition of an instrument? - might change my mind.