Living Dead Chipmunk

I've never been able to figure this out with my meager biology background. Even dating a biologist didn't help me.

The atoms and subatomic particles in my body are exactly the same as any other object on the planet. You could make a big happy rock out of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc, and it wouldn't spontaneously become alive. No matter what mixture or combination or shape you made it into. Yet it's not like my carbon atoms are 'special' carbon atoms, or my oxygen is 'special' oxygen.

So how come I can think, and a brick of coal can't?

What is it about protiens and amino acids that give rise to self-reproducing organisms (some of which can think, and some of which exhibit metacognition)?

What is it about this big lego-block house that lets my atoms take in other atoms to fuel the regeneration of said atoms? Or create a little lego-house out of some of my atoms?

The whole idea mystifies me.

Of course, then again, I'm not hard to mystify. The very fact that computers work, when you're just running electricity through oddly-shaped wires, mystifies me too.

bluefugue

Because your brain is structured differently than a brick of coal, of course. What's more important than the building blocks themselves, is how they are arranged. I would define life as a pattern rather than a "thing" -- it's a specific arrangement of atoms that is capable of replicating itself and affecting its environment in ways that more mundane arrangements cannot.

The essential question is, how did self-replicating molecules develop from non-self-replicating molecules? The study of abiogenesis would yield the most promising answers, though it is of course still a nascent field...

Once you achieve replication, you open up the floodgates of the evolutionary algorithm. Wait a few billion years and, it seems, interesting things can happen...

Stephen T-B

Does ANYONE know?
If someone’s got an explanation which excludes the goddit scenario, it’s not been expressed so clearly that a mere layman such as myself can understand it.
I think it won’t be understood until we understand a great deal more about a whole bunch of things; it’s like being presented with a ready-made sponge cake and asking “How did this happen?” when all we know is its chemical make-up.
Neither that nor the cake tell us about eggs, chickens, wheat, fields, sunlight, butter, milk, cows, sugar cane, salt mines (or desalination plants) or the oceans. They don’t tell us about whisks or food processors or wooden spoons or ovens. They don’t tell us about the cook, human intelligence or cookery schools.
If there is such a lot to know in terms of a sponge cake, how much more is there to know in terms of Life?

Pseudonymph

From what I understand...the presence of carbon is what distinguishes life from non-life. As far as THINKING goes...I have no idea.

[ November 20, 2002: Message edited by: SirenSpeak ]</p>

Godless Dave

So coal is alive?

Pseudonymph

Organic carbon I believe. It was awhile ago that I studied that so I may be a little off...I'll look into a bit more.

Demosthenes

and what if we discover forms of life that we recognize as being life but based on different elements such as silicon?

callmejay

There is no such thing as "life." It's just a useful label that we stick on things. There are always going to be borderline cases (virii, prions) which don't fit either in the "life" or "not life" categories. All definitions of everything are approximations. Think of any class of items, "tables," "books," "balls," "pens," and you will find that this is true.

We call things alive when they do certain things like eating and reproducing. Just remember that there is no *real* meaning of "life" or anything else, it's just based on what *we* call alive or not alive.

sakrilege

From The Origins of Life by John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary

crocodile deathroll

I feel that people a drawing long bow here but what about <a href="http://www.antics.org.uk/memes.htm" target="_blank">Memes </a>