quote:
Viri just don't do enough by themselves.
Those lazy good for nothing Viri!
Heheheh. While I see what you are saying, I think you have added a kind of hidden premise in your definition of life. Not that it is wrong, but it should be more out in the open for exploration.
It seems that you want "life" to be self-sufficient to some degree. Kind of like a snail or hermit crab, it carries it's home of proper chemical environment with it.
I am unsure why that should be the correct dividing line. I realize that property let's bacteria operate in a greater variety of exterior environments, and have a lot fewer dormant periods, but is that enough to separate one from the other?
The bacteria must still sit in environments that allow those Homes they carry around to keep being replenished, otherwise just like a virus it shuts down.
So maybe a way to look at it (the way I look at it anyway), they are both forms of life, but one kind has the ability to move around and stay active for longer periods, while the other sacrificed activity, for much greater endurance.
In a later post you ask how you can tell a virus is dead. I think it would be safe enough to say when it has been damaged enough that it can no longer function, given introduction to the proper chemical environment. That is essentially the same for bacteria that for all intents and purposes are "immortal" unless damaged by their environments.
Viri are much hardier than bacteria, though more restricted in their activity, requiring hosts to do what we would call living.
Wait a second, that sounds familar. Vampires!
Perhaps Viri should be classified as undead... never quite alive but never quite dead, unless obliterated.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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