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Member (Idle past 2903 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Life - an Unequivicol Definition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member |
Crystals can reproduce without change, but are not generally considered life, so I don't see how anything that reproduces without change should be. I did not suggest that anything that could reproduce accurately would be considered life. I am suggesting that a single celled organism capable of perfect reproduction via should not be considered not alive simply because it does not mutate.
Curiously I disagree. That their ability to reproduce is severely hampered by infertility (although not 100%) just shows they are participating in the part of evolution dealing with speciation and the formation of daughter populations that can't interbreed. It does not show anything of the sort. What it shows is that there parents are not capable of producing viable offspring.
Again I disagree -- the following generation would have virtually zero distribution of alleles from the existing mule population, and this would be a very distinctive change in the frequency of all the alleles. Seriously, RAZD? There is no following generation of mules. Mules do not descend from other mules.
That trait would be lost in the same way that many traits are lost through genetic drift, aka part of evolution. Sterile animals do not undergo genetic drift. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Hiding text of duplicate post. Please see Message 63. --Admin
Crystals can reproduce without change, but are not generally considered life, so I don't see how anything that reproduces without change should be. I did not suggest that anything that could reproduce accurately should be considered life. I am suggesting that a single celled, biological organism capable of perfect reproduction via mitosis should not be considered to not be alive simply because it does not mutate.
Curiously I disagree. That their ability to reproduce is severely hampered by infertility (although not 100%) just shows they are participating in the part of evolution dealing with speciation and the formation of daughter populations that can't interbreed. It does not show speciation. What it shows is that there parents are not capable of producing fertile offspring.
Again I disagree -- the following generation would have virtually zero distribution of alleles from the existing mule population, and this would be a very distinctive change in the frequency of all the alleles. Seriously, RAZD? There is no following generation of mules. Mules do not descend from other mules. What definition are you using for 'following generation'? Certainly nothing conventional. A following generation is the offspring of a past generation.
That trait would be lost in the same way that many traits are lost through genetic drift, aka part of evolution. Sterile animals do not undergo genetic drift. New mules do not contain a sampling of the allelles of a past generation of mules. Edited by Admin, : Hide text of duplicate post. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Crystals can reproduce without change, but are not generally considered life, so I don't see how anything that reproduces without change should be. I did not suggest that anything that could reproduce accurately should be considered life. I am suggesting that a single celled, biological organism capable of perfect reproduction via mitosis should not be considered to not be alive simply because it does not mutate.
Curiously I disagree. That their ability to reproduce is severely hampered by infertility (although not 100%) just shows they are participating in the part of evolution dealing with speciation and the formation of daughter populations that can't interbreed. It does not show speciation. What it shows is that there parents are not capable of producing fertile offspring.
Again I disagree -- the following generation would have virtually zero distribution of alleles from the existing mule population, and this would be a very distinctive change in the frequency of all the alleles. Seriously, RAZD? There is no following generation of mules. Mules do not descend from other mules. What definition are you using for 'following generation'? Certainly nothing conventional. A following generation is the offspring of a past generation.
That trait would be lost in the same way that many traits are lost through genetic drift, aka part of evolution. Sterile animals do not undergo genetic drift. New mules do not contain random a sampling of the allelles of a current or past population of mules. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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AlphaOmegakid Member (Idle past 2903 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
RAZD writes: ... So since a cell is the smallest unit of life ... Is it? Yes, Please don't forget Cell Theory which is much more important than evolution theory regarding OOL. Also, Evos have argued for years that evo theory does not apply to OOL. So what ist it? You seem to think evolution does apply to OOL. Hmmmm?
RAZD writes: By your definition (Message 1):
quote: You could have a prebiotic molecule in the RNA world that synthesizes ATP from ATP and uses that to reproduce the molecule, and according to your definition that would be life even though no cell is involved. It seems that your impetus (from reading other posts on this thread) for your definition is to find the boundary between life and non-life, to define the point of origin, the transition from chemistry to life. The point at which it is capable of undergoing evolutionary processes, the point at with it is capable of evolving. Yes, and you could have a God who created all kinds of living things 6000 years ago!.......Sorry, I couldn't resist! You have an interesting false interpretation of the definition. First at a minimum, my definition requires a self contained entity which means that the metabolic processes and the synthesizing processes occur inside whatever contains the entity. So my definition is not molecular in any sense as no living thing is. It is an assembly of molecules as every cell is. So self replicating molecules, even though quite interesting, are just novelties that are recognizably light years away from the complexities in living things. And regarding my impetus to find the boundary between chemicals and life, I think is quite well defined. A living organism must be able to synthesize ATP for metabolism and it must produce it's own catalysts for that synthesis. Your faithful blindness to evolution requires it's involvement everywhere, but why cannot living things come into being chemically, and not evolve? The first fossilized life shows no evolution in any measurable sense after 3.5 B years! And we know that bacterial live generation after generation with no evolution in a stable environment. Does that make them not alive? Of course not. So my definition doesn't require vague terms like "growth", "reproduction", and "evolution", however it is quite reasonable that a self contained entity that could create it's own ATP and synthesize proteins could also grow, reproduce, and evolve, which is exactly what we observe.
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ringo Member (Idle past 439 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid writes:
The nature of knowledge is that everything builds on something else. There is no ultimate foundation. You need a complex network of definitions.
All of these words carry ambiguous definitions themselves, and hence the current definitions of life are ambiguous and equivocal.
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AlphaOmegakid Member (Idle past 2903 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
NoNukes writes: What about these parasites? Mitochondria-free parasites harvest ATP directly from hosts | Ars Technica Mitochondria-free parasites harvest ATP directly from hosts
quote: I think you need to consider the context of the terms. Microsporida are cells and can survive (live) for some time outside of a host. They do produce a small amount of ATP during Substrate-level phosphorylation. After infecting a host, they need much more ATP than they can manufacture. So they have other pathways to "steal" this. Both contexts are alive according to my definition. A virus, however has no metabolic pathway for ATP outside of a host. All life comes from pr-existing life The law of Biogenesis
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AlphaOmegakid Member (Idle past 2903 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
ringo writes: The nature of knowledge is that everything builds on something else. There is no ultimate foundation. That's quite a philosophical statement. I would say the foundation is there at birth, and it pre-exists knowledge. But that's another forum I think.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 311 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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When defining life, people do it with different words like "growth", "reproduction", and "evolution". All of these words carry ambiguous definitions themselves, and hence the current definitions of life are ambiguous and equivocal. But do any of the people putting forward such definitions also propose that those words should be equivocal? If you personally can equivocate about the meaning of the word "reproduction", does it follow that someone who puts the word "reproduction" into his definition of life is himself equivocating?
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AlphaOmegakid Member (Idle past 2903 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
Dr. A writes: But do any of the people putting forward such definitions also propose that those words should be equivocal? If you personally can equivocate about the meaning of the word "reproduction", does it follow that someone who puts the word "reproduction" into his definition of life is himself equivocating? Equivocation whether in definitions or argumentation is a logic issue. In Scientific definitions, the logic should be sound. In general, I would think that biologists who put definitions of life in papers would tend to believe their definitions are unequivocal. However after publication, those definitions get challenged with counterfactuals and the only way they survive is through equivocating terms. RAZD is having a ball equivocating on his definition of life. He is squirming all over the place trying to defend it. It is rather amusing to read his posts right now as he is being challenged. I don't think that when he wrote it, he thought it was equivocal. (Actually this is basically NASA's definition of life) However, as he tries to defend it, he is forced with equivocation to defend it. Let me use your example of "reproduction". Some organisms don't reproduce. It doesn't matter what the reason is, they just don't. So then the defender tries to argue that cells of multicellular organism do reproduce. So he just equivocated on what the organism is to make his argument work. Not to mention that some unicellular organisms don't reproduce. Then what does he say? Who Knows? This is often referred to as "mental gymnastics" in argumentation rather than just accepting a defeater. Now I get to your first question. Yes! Now biologists knowingly put forth equivocal definitions, because they've been trained that "life" is undefinable without equivocal terms. Today they list "characteristics of life" rather than trying to define it unequivocally. They are fine with fuzzy things, so OOL funding can continue and "life" is good. So the people using these definitions aren't purposefully equivocating, but the definitions are. Edited by AlphaOmegakid, : No reason given.
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4443 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 5.0
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AOk writes: They are fine with fuzzy things, so OOL funding can continue and "life" is good. Big chunk of moola, huh?
Equivocation whether in definitions or argumentation is a logic issue. In Scientific definitions, the logic should be sound. In general, I would think that biologists who put definitions of life in papers would tend to believe their definitions are unequivocal.
OK, so now you have your unequivocal defenition, what's next? Publication? Are you the sole originator of the ATP Definition of Life or has it been proposed before? I find that I must still disagree with you. In my opinion, viruses are alive. Have you seen3-dimensional images of the external architecture of viruses? This is really, really complex chemistry.What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined: |
AOk writes: Actually, the Theespruit Formation of the Barberton Supergroup started forming 3547 ma years ago. And those rocks contain fossils of prokaryotes. No elephant fossils in there. Yes, and you could have a God who created all kinds of living things 6000 years ago! The tonalitic and trondjemitic gneisses of that area started forming around 3645 ma ago. These are facts whether you like them or not. So, no, Spooks couldn't have poofed all 'kinds' into existence 6000 years ago. Evidence, AlphaOmegakid, I know that evidence doesn't mean much to you, but in science the evidence is very important.
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined:
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AOk writes: Nope. We don't have to reinvent the wheel again every time we build a new donkey-driven wagon. Nothing philosophical about that.
That's quite a philosophical statement.
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined: |
AOk writes: Really? I thought that the modern evolutionary theory deals with genetic variation and natural selection? Have you ever published anything about evolution in any peer-reviewed scientific journal dealing with the subject?
Yes, Please don't forget Cell Theory which is much more important than evolution theory regarding OOL. AOk writes: I'm not really too sure why you brought this up. For me (not being a biologist) the theory of evolution deals with genetic variation and natural selection. Basically describing the mechanisms of how all the life-forms we experience today came along from unicellular life. That's the TOE. Evos have argued for years that evo theory does not apply to OOL. So what ist it? You seem to think evolution does apply to OOL. Hmmmm? Life (as we know it) evolved from prokaryotes to what we encounter today by means of genetic variation and natural selection. That's the theory of evolution in a nut shell for me. Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.
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AlphaOmegakid Member (Idle past 2903 days) Posts: 564 From: The city of God Joined: |
Pressie writes: Actually, the Theespruit Formation of the Barberton Supergroup started forming 3547 ma years ago. And those rocks contain fossils of prokaryotes. No elephant fossils in there. The tonalitic and trondjemitic gneisses of that area started forming around 3645 ma ago. These are facts whether you like them or not. So, no, Spooks couldn't have poofed all 'kinds' into existence 6000 years ago. Evidence, AlphaOmegakid, I know that evidence doesn't mean much to you, but in science the evidence is very important. Actually it is you making the bodacious claims as facts. So please support yours with evidence. I made no claims that I have to support. I know reading comprehension can be difficult. Maybe that's why you are so quick to believe that these are facts.
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined: |
AOk writes: So, you doubt the Barberton Supergroup? Do you doubt the fossils found in those rocks? What exactly do you doubt?
Actually it is you making the bodacious claims as facts. So please support yours with evidence. I made no claims that I have to support. I know reading comprehension can be difficult. Maybe that's why you are so quick to believe that these are facts.
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