Living or Nonliving Matter

Living organisms are traditionally defined as matter that has a metabolism, responds to the environment and reproduces.

Viruses, for example, are a source of debate as to what defines a living thing -- there are disagreements of how to classify viruses, but I think on account of viruses depending on the metabolism of host cells to survive, the majority of scientists would classify them as nonliving.

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It would be possible, in principle, to construct a human or animal from off the shelf chemicals. It would, however, be technically too difficult for us now.

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If we had means to support organ engineering, perhaps human engineering would be possible in principle, but have we engineered a heart yet? The process of lab-grown organs from cell cultures is too complicated for the polymer scaffoldings that work for the engineering of simple tissue.

If we don't know if it's possible to engineer a complex organ, how can we possibly presume that human engineering is possible?

Besides, if it were known to be possible, that still doesn't negate the distinction between living and nonliving matter. Nonliving matter does not demonstrate metabolism, adaptation, and reproduction.

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Backing up a bit on Matter
Hum... got me to wondering what matter is... say as opposed to force. Magnetic force, light... light's a force ain't it? All those little photons zooming around or are photons matter?

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Levi wrote:

If we had means to support organ engineering, perhaps human engineering would be possible in principle, but have we engineered a heart yet? The process of lab-grown organs from cell cultures is too complicated for the polymer scaffoldings that work for the engineering of simple tissue.

If we don't know if it's possible to engineer a complex organ, how can we possibly presume that human engineering is possible?

Besides, if it were known to be possible, that still doesn't negate the distinction between living and nonliving matter. Nonliving matter does not demonstrate metabolism, adaptation, and reproduction.

No, I don't mean start with living matter. I mean construct a human or other animal from bottles of chemicals. How do I know it's possible? Because either the human body functions by magic, or else it's just matter functioning according to purely, if unknown, scientific principles. I opt for the latter theory.

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Nobody with any weight in science denies that life is a matter of chemistry and I certainly hope I haven't come off as an 18th century vitalist -- like the types who, on account of their religious principles, stuck their noses up at Friedrich Wöhler's synthesis of the organic urea. But just because the driving force of life processes is chemically based doesn't mean a man can be synthesized from the ground up.

Maybe I'm just an old fashioned kind of guy, but it doesn't seem feasible to pass up the entire evolution of prokaryotes into eukaryotes into more and more complex organisms all in a single laboratory proceedure. I guess, although it's not clear, that you're suggesting construing a human embryo with a particular type of DNA? I've never heard of synthesizing DNA from scratch, but I'd pay to see the series of reactions undergone to achieve it, not to mention the meticulous structure of the rest of the cell.

It took a really long time for Earth to get the conditions for cellular life just right. Life is chemistry. If we could pass by what you're calling "technical difficulties", sure it would be possible. And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. :wink:

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are photons matter?

Photons have no mass, they are quanta of energy. All forms of electromagnetic radiation (e.g., light, radiowaves) are quantised as photons.

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Drawing the Line - A Matter of Preference

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Photons have no mass, they are quanta of energy. All forms of electromagnetic radiation (e.g., light, radiowaves) are quantised as photons.

So what we got here is that matter and energy are equivalent with an additional factor/multiple - whatever it's called that makes the change, huh? Still dealing with nonliving matter though. But we can find examples of matter that can do one of each of the defined requirements of living stuff, make use of the groceries, bitch when provoked, and my all time favorite reproduce.
So the difference between living and nonliving matter is rather a matter of definition - where we care to draw the line, huh?

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Levi wrote:

Nobody with any weight in science denies that life is a matter of chemistry and I certainly hope I haven't come off as an 18th century vitalist -- like the types who, on account of their religious principles, stuck their noses up at Friedrich Wöhler's synthesis of the organic urea. But just because the driving force of life processes is chemically based doesn't mean a man can be synthesized from the ground up.

Maybe I'm just an old fashioned kind of guy, but it doesn't seem feasible to pass up the entire evolution of prokaryotes into eukaryotes into more and more complex organisms all in a single laboratory proceedure. I guess, although it's not clear, that you're suggesting construing a human embryo with a particular type of DNA? I've never heard of synthesizing DNA from scratch, but I'd pay to see the series of reactions undergone to achieve it, not to mention the meticulous structure of the rest of the cell.

It took a really long time for Earth to get the conditions for cellular life just right. Life is chemistry. If we could pass by what you're calling "technical difficulties", sure it would be possible. And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. :wink:

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are photons matter?

Photons have no mass, they are quanta of energy. All forms of electromagnetic radiation (e.g., light, radiowaves) are quantised as photons.

Right, but I'm only saying that it's possible, not easy, nor that we will ever be advanced enough to do it, or even that anyone will.

If you disagree with what I just said, which is that it is possible, then you are saying that it's fundamentally impossible. There is no basis for looking at any object, and saying "One can't even in principle construct an object that is a close enough duplicate to function the same way."

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Re: Drawing the Line - A Matter of Preference

mrgardon wrote:

...But we can find examples of matter that can do one of each of the defined requirements of living stuff, make use of the groceries, bitch when provoked, and my all time favorite reproduce...

Yes, humans, you included.

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Examples of Metabolism, Adaptation & Reproduction

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Nonliving matter does not demonstrate metabolism, adaptation, and reproduction.

Levi, can you give me some examples of matter, living or not that display only one or two of the requirements of life? I'm guessing crystals might be a nonliving example of reproduction.

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Living or Nonliving Matter

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