Kai: "New forms of life"?

[Kai]

I'm not upset, don't be thinking that heh

any system by which self replicating molecules obtain metabolism and have some sort of interaction with their environment could be considered life, even if it doesn't use nucleic acids.


Yeah, "life" should have been capitalized, as I was talking about the system. I was not talking about consciousness or happiness or anything. I was talking about Life in the biological sense, and a scientifically meaningful definition.

Although, I dissagree with you somewhat on your last statement. The Process of Sustaining came mostly out of my understanding of biology and emergent ecology, and I consider it the closest thing I have to religion.

[Template]

I'm not upset, don't be thinking that heh

any system by which self replicating molecules obtain metabolism and have some sort of interaction with their environment could be considered life, even if it doesn't use nucleic acids.

Thanks, good to know.

Although, I dissagree with you somewhat on your last statement. The Process of Sustaining came mostly out of my understanding of biology and emergent ecology, and I consider it the closest thing I have to religion.

I imagine I'd agree if I knew as much as you.  I think I'll try to remind myself that the sciences people study (at least the sciences) are still dynamic -- info-alive, even.

[Kai]

I'm not upset, don't be thinking that heh

any system by which self replicating molecules obtain metabolism and have some sort of interaction with their environment could be considered life, even if it doesn't use nucleic acids.

Thanks, good to know.

Although, I dissagree with you somewhat on your last statement. The Process of Sustaining came mostly out of my understanding of biology and emergent ecology, and I consider it the closest thing I have to religion.

I imagine I'd agree if I knew as much as you.  I think I'll try to remind myself that the sciences people study (at least the sciences) are still dynamic -- info-alive, even.

Good science is never static. As our understanding of the universe changes, our science must change with it, or we fall into the trap of dogma.

[Elder Iptuous]

without going back through the whole thread.....
did you say that you did or did not consider viruses to be alive?

[Kai]

Viruses are ametabolic. I don't consider them alive. More or less rogue DNA

[Vene]

Viruses are ametabolic. I don't consider them alive. More or less rogue DNA

Or RNA, but the point is unchanged.

[Elder Iptuous]

So, is virology general considered a biological science?  Do you think of it as similar to toxicology even though the viruses are dynamic and evolve along with their hosts?

[Kai]

So, is virology general considered a biological science?  Do you think of it as similar to toxicology even though the viruses are dynamic and evolve along with their hosts?

Virology is usually considered along with the biological sciences because of viruses close and somewhat parasitic interaction with living things as a given and constant. I think of it more like a branch of medicine, honestly, or genetics, which would make it a biological science.

Its walking a line.

[Vene]

So, is virology general considered a biological science?  Do you think of it as similar to toxicology even though the viruses are dynamic and evolve along with their hosts?

Virology is usually considered along with the biological sciences because of viruses close and somewhat parasitic interaction with living things as a given and constant. I think of it more like a branch of medicine, honestly, or genetics, which would make it a biological science.

Its walking a line.

I think it fits into biology because that's the closest match.  I guess it could be argued that it could be chemistry, but considering the existence of biochemistry and that viruses share characteristics with life, it's part of biology.  I also feel like sharing that in my microbiology class we just consider viruses to be alive, not because we think it's correct, but for the sake of simplicity.

[Kai]

So, is virology general considered a biological science?  Do you think of it as similar to toxicology even though the viruses are dynamic and evolve along with their hosts?

Virology is usually considered along with the biological sciences because of viruses close and somewhat parasitic interaction with living things as a given and constant. I think of it more like a branch of medicine, honestly, or genetics, which would make it a biological science.

Its walking a line.

I think it fits into biology because that's the closest match.  I guess it could be argued that it could be chemistry, but considering the existence of biochemistry and that viruses share characteristics with life, it's part of biology.  I also feel like sharing that in my microbiology class we just consider viruses to be alive, not because we think it's correct, but for the sake of simplicity.

Yeah, even if you have a good fix on what is most definitely Life, and what is most definitely Non-Life, there's a gradient of Almost Life in between Non-Life and Life. That's where things get difficult to classify...viruses are Non-Life but they're just enough Almost Life that to really discuss microbiology you have to include them in with Life for simplicity sake.

[Xooxe]

Just thought I'd chip in with a random Buckminster Fuller quote:

Furthermore, today's hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude important popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, for instance, such historically important events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm-blooded, moist, and soft-skinned humans were clearly not to be confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was therefore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.

The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, for instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive-domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenon called animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of humanly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile manufacturers from creating the human drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic. It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.

I was about to leave out the last few sentences, but left them in - warts 'n' all. Despite the teleology along with his cynicism towards academic specialisation, I find that quote to be one of my favourites of his.

[LMNO]

Sorry, I got to "hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning," and my brain simply locked up.

[Kai]

Yeah, sounds like 'suit talk' for social philosophers.

[Xooxe]

Sorry, I got to "hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning," and my brain simply locked up.

That's pretty mild for Bucky. I could probably find quotes that would end with your brain being cordoned off with caution tape, but I'll spare you. A lot of his writing just sinks off into poetry, almost.

[Kai]

Sorry, I got to "hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning," and my brain simply locked up.

That's pretty mild for Bucky. I could probably find quotes that would end with your brain being cordoned off with caution tape, but I'll spare you. A lot of his writing just sinks off into poetry, almost.

Is this the same Bucky started up all the geodesic dome architecture?