Bio 103, week 2

In class, we established that what we believe is "alive" is determined by how we define life.

Since the word life, initself, is such a broad term, there are various definitions of life, and thus allows for various interpretations of what life ought to be.  Though I recognize that people have different perspectives as to what life is, I believe that there is an over-arching, "standard" definition of life that people use not as a means of labeling or classifying(or just that), but as a means of making sense of the world. I think that we can either focus on differences or on similarities, focusing on similarities allows us to have a better understanding about the world inwhich we live.

Although our definitions, ideas, and beliefs may not be entirely accurate, we constantly revising, refining and seeking ways in which we can expand our current conceptions.

Perhaps the reason that it is so difficult to pinpoint a definition of what it means to be alive is because this constantly changes as things become more or less significant to us. For example, before the dangers of deforestation were truly in the public eye, people did not consider trees "alive" enough to save from being cut down. However, we now have environmental groups chaining themselves to trees in order to protect and save forests from being destroyed. Because society's view of trees and deforestation has changed, due to the exhaustion of Earth's resources, their significance has changed as well. We give greater life to the things that have a direct impact on us, thereby always assigning and taking away value from our environment as our circumstances change.

 I enjoyed the discussion we had on determining what is life when we analyze it using the word "alive". I am still not completely persuaded by the ideas that have been shared in class since it is such a complicated subject and I am still trying to understand it myself. Yet I continue to question the idea of classification; what terminologies am I using (and how) to distinguish what is alive and what is not. What should I call a living organism and why? This weeks lab was extremely fun and it made me understand how classifying objects can be a "red flag" in science and one should always be careful when doing so. I understand that there should be room for debate and specualtion but something about the topic of life and questioning it makes me feel uneasy. 

One thing I wanted to say in class but didn't get a chance to is that one important distinction to make when trying to define life is that between life in general and intelligent life. As we are an example of intelligent life, it is sometimes hard for us to differentiate between the thoughts, feelings, and autonomy (all life has autonomy, but not necessarily to the same degree that many animals have) and life. Things without brains are still classified as alive. Another thing we tend to do, as animals ourselves, is, when thinking of life, to think of the more complex forms of life such as animals and plants. I think we haven't talked enough about things like bacteria and microbes, which also are classified as alive.

I believe this also brings up another interesting point. One thing Professor Grobstein brought up in class is that living organisms are highly complex and have an "improbable assembly." However, some forms are more complex than others, therefore, some forms of life are more probable than others. More complex forms are less probable while less complex forms are more probable (right?). I would assume that the life we would be most likely to find elsewhere would be something like bacteria. So at what point is something complex enough to be called life? Or is that question irrelavent because there are so many other factors to defining life?

In response to Terrible2s:

"You can't observe a soul (that I know of)."

In defense of art, creative writing, etc-- yes, you can observe a soul. We just don't know how to observe it empirically. In my opinion, not being able to prove something with definite measurements/numbers doesn't mean that thing doesn't exist. I think spirituality and religion exist for a reason-- I don't think spirituality is just made up. My mother claims that new born babies have clear personalities (which would contradict JPierre's statement that fetuses don't have a life).

This is something from another class I'm in, but it definitely has to do with "the type of science we're doing in this class" vs what I've found to be called "reductionist science" ([T]ruth science).

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, the author (Michael Pollan) talks about a man named Sir Albert Howard (1873 - 1947). He was an English agronomist who formed the philosophical foundations for organic agriculture. He said: "We need to treat the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject." Howard did no "hard science" to speak of, only general observation. Yet with that sort of observation, he was able to state confidently that "soil fertility" had a direct impact on "the  national health". 

Then this guy named Baron Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, "set agriculture on its industrial path" by introducing "NPK"-- an acronym for the main chemicals in soil that nourish plants. This forever changed the way we farm. Most/all fertilizers have an "NPK" ratio on them. But here's the catch-- this chemist discovered this, then people took it (and still take it) as the Truth-- as in, people don't question this way of farming at all now. I think it's okay to accept that nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are in the soil and help plants grow-- but it's not okay (in fact it's dangerously ignorant) to believe that NPK IS ALL THERE IS TO IT. That is reductionist science.