Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction

[Ella S.]

Is a painting somehing more than pigments on canvas?

Yes. It is also the relationship those pigments have with that canvas, and the relationship it has with its creator, and the relationship it has with its viewer.

 

[Audie]

Yes. It is also the relationship those pigments have with that canvas, and the relationship it has with its creator, and the relationship it has with the viewer.

It's a stretch to say an inert object has
a relationship with anyone. It is strictly one sided.

The painting is not affected in the least
degree, nothing added to nor taken from
it- becomes more or less than-by how people
happen to,feel about it.

Same with images we see in clouds,
They are still just clouds, they are not
something more even if for a moment
one sees a likeness unto Richard Milhouse
Nixon in them.


The only change of state is inside people's heads.

 

[We Never Know]

Of course it does. The "nothing more than" is a pretty big hint, don't you think?

What is life?

 

[HonestJoe]

Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction?

No. There are some bioelectrical responses too.

Love, hate, empathy, consciousness, etc.

What about them? Can any of those emotions, feelings or concepts exist without the complex set of chemical reactions we call life?

 

[We Never Know]

No. There are some bioelectrical responses too.

What about them? Can any of those emotions, feelings or concepts exist without the complex set of chemical reactions we call life?

"No. There are some bioelectrical responses too"

Do chemicals reactions have anything to do with that?

 

[LuisDantas]

The title says it all...

Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction?

Love, hate, empathy, consciousness, etc.

I think that, for the purposes of this question, all things turn out to be exactly what superficial appearances suggest them to be.

Life is indeed the result of chance chemical reactions that accidentally turned out to create roughly self-replicating molecules.

And it just happened that quite a few interesting, often challenging properties emerged from that somewhat self-organizing chaos.

There are people who want to lend metaphysical significance to that scenario. I very much fail to see rhyme or reason in the effort.

 

[Ella S.]

It's a stretch to say an inert object has
a relationship with anyone. It is strictly one sided.

The painting is not affected in the least
degree, nothing added to nor taken from
it- becomes more or less than-by how people
happen to,feel about it.

Same with images we see in clouds,
They are still just clouds, they are not
something more even if for a moment
one sees a likeness unto Richard Milhouse
Nixon in them.


The only change of state is inside people's heads.

Chemistry is all about the relationship that molecules have with one another. It would be impossible to describe without relationships.

H2O is not just 2 hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule. It is 2 hydrogen molecules bound with an oxygen molecule. The relationship they have with one another is as important to defining H2O as what they are on their own.

For the condescending sarcasm you dish out to everyone, even in this thread, I'd expect you to have a better head behind those ears, but I suppose that was illogical of me. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit in the same way that reductionism is the lowest form of understanding.

 

[Audie]

Chemistry is all about the relationship that molecules have with one another. It would be impossible to describe without relationships.

H2O is not just 2 hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule. It is 2 hydrogen molecules bound with an oxygen molecule. The relationship they have with one another is as important to defining H2O as what they are on their own.

For the condescending sarcasm you dish out to everyone, even in this thread, I'd expect you to have a better head behind those ears, but I suppose that was illogical of me. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit in the same way that reductionism is the lowest form of understanding

This personal attack and attempt at chemistry lesson is not even tangentially related to my post

Address the post not the poster is the rule.

Your continuing such behaviour may result in banning.

Please seek to improve, we'd hate to see you go,

 

[wellwisher]

I would remind you what I originally said, in my reply to @Sandra Jayne . This was to draw an important distinction between evidence and proof. Saying science is "about" evidence would be a fairly empty statement and I didn't say that.

Science is "about" making predictive models of aspects of the physical world. I suppose that's what you mean by "functionality".

Predictive is about telling the future, with any theory, where the future is where, there is not yet any evidence. Evolutionary Theory, for example, has plenty of evidence that shows how life has changed over time. However, it cannot predict what will happen to any aspect of life in the future, so we can double check the predictive value of the theory. I would call that the Evolutionary Correlation of previous data of how life changed. Once we leave that data, the correlation ends.

On the other hand, the equations connected to the theory of projectile motion, were used to put a man on the moon. They could correlate the past, and even predict the future, and show future data, just as the theory predicts.

The idea that life is about chemicals is a theory based on previous evidence. It can also predict that the future of life tomorrow or next year, will also involve chemicals. However, this does not give us anything unique about the nature of life.

My theory is that water provides natural selection, at the nanoscale, for the organics of cells and life. The way to prove this for the future, is to see if there are any new active molecules in cells, that function without water; ignore natural selection by water. The organics can make almost anything, so if this theory was false, we should see a some or even a wide range of new organics that do not need water to work.

 

[dybmh]

No, it is not. Let me show you the limit of scientific reductionism, because that is what is assumed in your question.
You can't show or understand the meaning of your question by looking at chemical reactions and other scientific facts in your brain.

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[Audie]

Predictive is about telling the future, with any theory, where the future is where, there is not yet any evidence. Evolutionary Theory, for example, has plenty of evidence that shows how life has changed over time. However, it cannot predict what will happen to any aspect of life in the future, so we can double check the predictive value of the theory. I would call that the Evolutionary Correlation of previous data of how life changed. Once we leave that data, the correlation ends.

On the other hand, the equations connected to the theory of projectile motion, were used to put a man on the moon. They could correlate the past, and even predict the future, and show future data, just as the theory predicts.

The idea that life is about chemicals is a theory based on previous evidence. It can also predict that the future of life tomorrow or next year, will also involve chemicals. However, this does not give us anything unique about the nature of life.

My theory is that water provides natural selection, at the nanoscale, for the organics of cells and life. The way to prove this for the future, is to see if there are any new active molecules in cells, that function without water; ignore natural selection by water. The organics can make almost anything, so if this theory was false, we should see a some or even a wide range of new organics that do not need water to work.

If ToE were wrong shouldn't there be at least
one contrary datum point ?

 

[HonestJoe]

Do chemicals reactions have anything to do with that?

It's all inter-related but both chemical and bio-electric elements are necessary. They work together to allow us to do things like making sarcastic jokes or having them fly right over our heads.

The second part of my post was the significant one. Feel free to address that.

 

[Brickjectivity]

The title says it all...

Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction?

Love, hate, empathy, consciousness, etc.

Life is at least this: an opportunity to know some things. It is nothing more than a chemical reaction, but that is only true in the sense that baseball is nothing more than a set of rules. Playing the game is not the same as the game itself.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

The title says it all...

Is life nothing more than a chemical reaction?

Love, hate, empathy, consciousness, etc.

No.

 

[PureX]

Science is "about" making predictive models of aspects of the physical world.

FUNCTIONALLY predictive. It's not the "models" we are after. It's the predictive functionality. It's control over our physical environment through that predictive functionality. That control is humanity's "super power". It's how we survive and thrive in the world. Don't mistake any of this for a pursuit of truth. It's all about control.

What is life?

Life is a whole array of transcendent possibilities that did not and does not otherwise exist apart from it. Consciousness, for example. Self will. Imagination. The list is long and extraordinary.

 

[PureX]

No, life is not "nothing more" than a chemical reaction. Even if life is ultimately a series of chemical, electrical, and physical processes,...

Life is far more than the physical processes that generate it. In fact, it's the "far more" part that enables us to recognize it in the first place. If it were not more than just those physical processes, we would not perceive it as being anything other than those physical processes. In fact, we would perceive nothing at all. Because those physical processes are not self-conscious.

We're the ones who continue to create ourselves every time we eat and drink and sleep, every time we treat an illness, and so on.

Yes, self-will and self-creation are just a few of the extraordinary possibilities that life enables that did not and do not exist apart from it.

 

[exchemist]

FUNCTIONALLY predictive. It's not the "models" we are after. It's the predictive functionality. It's control over our physical environment through that predictive functionality. That control is humanity's "super power". It's how we survive and thrive in the world. Don't mistake any of this for a pursuit of truth. It's all about control.

Science is about understanding nature through observation and modelling it. The test of the model is its abiltiy to predict. But it most assuredly is the model we are after, because we have good reason to think that a good model reflects, albeit imperfectly, physical reality.

That is not at all the same as "control". Plate tectonics allows us to understand why there are earthquakes and the various sorts of volcanoes and tells us where we should expect to find each. But we have no more hope of controlling them than we do the nuclear processes of stars. That's not why we study it. We do it out of curiosity: knowledge-seeking.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Can you elaborate on this?

Okay, you get the long answer.

Part 1: The problem is in effect philosophy for certain words and how they relate to the objectively real world. The problem is the objectively real world as you read it, that is also words.
So here it is as short as it can be done: What is the world independent of your soul/mind/brain/thoughts and in itself?
One standard answer is that it appears unknowable, because knowledge requires a human to know and thus you can't know something, unless you know it. And thus it can't be independent of your soul/mind/brain/thoughts and in itself.

Part 2: That then gets tangled up in philosophical physicalism as the claim that only the observable objectively physical is real.
The problem is that real is not observable objectively physical. You can see that a cat is black but you can't see that the world is physical or real and so on.

Part 3: In the formal sense it is not unique to physicalism and can be found both among religious people and non-religious as to what is really real.
And then there are those like me, who don't know that and have stopped claiming anything about what is really real.

 

[RestlessSoul]

It's a stretch to say an inert object has
a relationship with anyone. It is strictly one sided.

The painting is not affected in the least
degree, nothing added to nor taken from
it- becomes more or less than-by how people
happen to,feel about it.

Same with images we see in clouds,
They are still just clouds, they are not
something more even if for a moment
one sees a likeness unto Richard Milhouse
Nixon in them.


The only change of state is inside people's heads.

Every entity, object, and phenomenon is involved in a web of relationships with everything around it. The qualities of any given thing, or event, is defined by those evolving relationships.

Indeed, it has been argued from both philosophy (see Berkeley, Kant, Descartes etc) and from quantum physics (see Wheeler, Fuchs, Rovelli etc), that entities have qualities only in respect of their interactions with other entities, and with observers.

"An isolated object, taken in itself...has no particular state. At most we can attribute to it a probabilistic disposition to manifest itself one way or another. But even this is only an anticipation of future phenomena, a reflection of past phenomena, only and always relative to another object."
- Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland, 2020

 

[Debater Slayer]

No, life is not "nothing more" than a chemical reaction. Even if life is ultimately a series of chemical, electrical, and physical processes, collectively those things give us meaning, value, love, empathy, friendship, and so on.

We're the ones who continue to create ourselves every time we eat and drink and sleep, every time we treat an illness, and so on. These things help us continue to survive so, in the same way that we imbue a clock with purpose and meaning when we create it, we imbue our future selves with purpose and meaning by creating them.

Yes, sure, that purpose can ultimately be reduced to and understood as all of these complex processes, but that doesn't mean we have to strip away the meaning it has to us. It doesn't have to become "nothing" unless we choose so.

My view is similar to this. On a causal level, I believe life is indeed a combination of physical processes. For example, humans stop being alive when our bodies stop functioning. If there were anything causing life and consciousness besides physical processes, I would expect a different outcome than that.

But the physical processes lead to the emergence of consciousness, abstractions, meaning, emotions, relationships, philosophies, and hobbies, among other things. When I think of life, I don't just think of the physical aspects and go, "My goal today is to wake up and survive another day of biological interactions within my body." I think of what I want to do, what meaning I obtain from my actions, who I want to be with or where I want to be, etc.