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New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

quantamagazine.org

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Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#11

Post by whatshisface »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

Words are only useful insofar as they point to groups of entities that the speaker and listener agree are being pointed to. So, we should ask "what is the most useful definition of life?" It's a short word, so it's valuable real-estate. What should the definition of life be?

It's easy to get wrapped up into discussions about words, but don't forget that the things they point to is what's really interesting.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#12

Post by HankB99 »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

Much the same as Pluto is no longer a planet. These things run on a continuum and the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#13

Post by novia »

sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

The thinking on this has been changing recently as more discoveries are made. The linked article even alludes to it by calling viruses the fourth domain, implying that they are indeed life.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#14

Post by chii »

Neeek wrote: post #8
sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

I thought the reason was that a virus has no means to reproduce without hijacking some other living thing's facilities with which to replicate itself.

but it's unclear that this definition really means anything, because you can say that humans lack the facilities to replicate itself, without access to food and water and air too!

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#15

Post by meri_dian »

Here's a controversial view, but any good comments section needs a few of them:

Viruses are no more "life" than bacteria are "life" or amoeba are "life" or ants are "life" or mice are "life" or humans are "life"... We're all just chemical machines, nothing more nothing less.

Giving the word 'life' some special significance is misleading and confusing. In order to not confuse ourselves we should be talking about functions and descriptions of those functions as implemented among chemical machines.

Do viruses reproduce? Yes, by hijacking cellular machinery. Do bacteria reproduce? Yes, by cloning themselves. ...

This sort of thinking about the world allows us to stay close to reality without abstract and ultimately meaningless distractions like 'life'. Heaving the burden of abstraction onto 'reproduce' is still dangerous, but much less so than allowing 'life' to lurk as an abstract category in our minds.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#16

Post by Retra »

meri_dian wrote: post #15

Here's a controversial view, but any good comments section needs a few of them: Viruses are no more "life" than bacteria are "life" or amoeba are "life" or ants are "life" or mice are "life" or humans are "life"... We're all just chemical machines, nothing more nothing less. Giving the word 'life' some special significance is misleading and confusing. In order to not confuse ourselves we should be talking about funct…

While I totally agree with you, there is some value in having a clear definition of life if you're trying to do something like determine if it exists on other planets. In that sense, you're looking for some kind of self-separating chemical unit, which looks very different from a homogenous soup which happens to undergo complex chemical reactions.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#17

Post by Synaesthesia »

meri_dian wrote: post #15

Here's a controversial view, but any good comments section needs a few of them: Viruses are no more "life" than bacteria are "life" or amoeba are "life" or ants are "life" or mice are "life" or humans are "life"... We're all just chemical machines, nothing more nothing less. Giving the word 'life' some special significance is misleading and confusing. In order to not confuse ourselves we should be talking about funct…

The problem with that analogy IMO is that machines can be comprehended by humans, whereas even the most primitive forms of life are more sophisticated than anything human created.

Reproduction is an astonishing feat in itself - if only we could create a machine which could reproduce, but it's not so simple!

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#18

Post by novia »

Neeek wrote: post #8
sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

I thought the reason was that a virus has no means to reproduce without hijacking some other living thing's facilities with which to replicate itself.

Neither do rickettsia or chlamydia, two bacteria. Honestly, whoever was deciding on the definition of "what is life" knew ahead of time the kinds of things they wanted to include and they worked backwards from there.

We want to exclude viruses because they are too mechanical. There's no magic to them. That's the way it appeared before we started finding all these giant viruses anyways.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#19

Post by nyc111 »

ohf wrote: post #5
sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

Viruses are more like robots. They don't respond to stimuli. They just, do. The definition of "life" comes down to splitting hairs. We don't consider something "alive" if its behavior doesn't change when its environment does.

>We don't consider something "alive" if its behavior doesn't change when its environment does.

I think this is too vague. A cat may continue to sleep without responding to changes in its environment but may respond to an internal stimulus (hunger) and get up and go. So response or lack of response to the environment may not be a good criterion to define life.

Re: New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

#20

Post by taneq »

ohf wrote: post #5
sebazzz wrote: post #4

I never understand why viruses are not life. Bacteria are life because they are essentially a single-cell organism and act like any cell in our body: they consume energy and produce waste. Viruses may not be a cell, but they can be damaged, they die, and they appear to be more than a simple chemical process.

Viruses are more like robots. They don't respond to stimuli. They just, do. The definition of "life" comes down to splitting hairs. We don't consider something "alive" if its behavior doesn't change when its environment does.

Robots respond to stimuli within their construction / programming. It's what distinguishes them from dumb mechanisms.

Anyway, the term "life" is poorly and inconsistently defined and really only means "what we generally think of as life".

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