doppelgänger;947004 said:
Which criteria for "life" are dispositive in your opinion, Hal?
I adhere to the "classic" definition of a life form, something similar to this from wikipedia;
Conventional definition: Often scientists say that life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit the following phenomena:
- Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
- Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
- Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
- Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
- Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
- Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
- Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.
However, i would be willing to extend my own personal definition of a life form to robotic or alien life of as yet unknown construct - which would require their own defined characteristics.
For biological Earthly life though, i stick to the above requirements of which a virus only fulfills numbers 2, 5 and 7, with #1 being partially fulfilled.
Comet said:
I take it you don't mean the family of birds called Prion..... I think many think they are alive! I take it you mean the infections agents of proteins....
Lol, yes prions the infectious mutant membrane proteins, BSE, CJD, scrapie etc.
Comet said:
Yet, are not all "living organisms" made up of genetic material? Does a virus not fit that bill, more so than a protien?
More so than a protein, but it has no metabolism, no real control over its partial internal environment, no growth - a virus being "born" in its final state, and no (AFAIA) response to external stimuli whatsoever.
If we classified Sonny from I-Robot as a life form, then a virus would be the equivalent of a software virus or a programmable nanite.
