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Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
111–120 of 143 posts
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#112Isn’t the question of just-what-is-life-anyway more of a worry for linguists and philosophers rather than scientists?
“Life” as it were, is a concept invented with either the intention of distinguishing “us” from the rocks around ourselves, or, if you’re being slightly less charitable, giving “us” a way to insult the, um, others.
Sure, drawing some line in the sand between mice and boulders is a great idea, but it’s a pretty arbitrary one, especially if you have to strap a bunch of historical baggage on it.
This grand debate is almost as fun as what-constitutes-a-planet. We should do that one again.
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've got a minority opinion calling crystals "alive," although it does jibe with one definition of life that I heard: "any self-sustaining system that reduces internal entropy."
> "any self-sustaining system that reduces internal entropy." Planet Earth would/should definitely count as alive, especially if it "reproduces" via us terraforming other planets to become like Earth.
By this argument houses would also count as alive because they “reproduce” via humans building more houses.
(When you feel compelled to “air quote” a key term in your argument, that’s a clue you probably don’t have a good argument.)
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Viruses need a host environment to replicate. Fish need water and plant life or other fish to replicate. Algae needs nutrients to replicate. Every lifeform can only exist in some host environment. Viruses simply happen to have biological host environments, right?
You're equivocating environments and hosts. Hosts do the replication for the viruses. Environments do NOT do the replication for the fish.
You've not understood the depth of the original comment's thinking.
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#115Isn’t the question of just-what-is-life-anyway more of a worry for linguists and philosophers rather than scientists? “Life” as it were, is a concept invented with either the intention of distinguishing “us” from the rocks around ourselves, or, if you’re being slightly less charitable, giving “us” a way to insult the, um, others. Sure, drawing some line in the sand between mice and boulders is a great idea, but it’s…
This seems like just another way of saying we don’t understand life scientifically yet.
When we do finally agree on a mathematically rigorous definition of life, it will seem obvious in retrospect and scientists will kick philosophers off the field, just like they did with previous subjects like the composition of matter, the movement of heavenly bodies, etc.
Every scientific topic has to go through a messy definition phase before its study can be properly organized. People studied heat and cold for a long time before they really knew what they were, for example.
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#116> many biological molecules can be constructed from just six simple molecules, including water, methane... There is no news here. This is just the same speculation that has been made thousands of times before for decades. Of course we can make big molecules from small ones in a lab. Of course life has to reproduce, metabolize and have a boundary from the environment. Pointing this out is not "the key to the origins o…
The NG doesn't pretend that it's news?
And of course that this is the key to the origins of life - how could we possibly make progress on this question without understanding this first?
And someone had to be the first to point this out. Which Tibor Gánti did in 1971 & 1974.
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#117Considering that the first proto-computers were not programmable, I can't help but be skeptical that the first life needed genetic material. Certainly there were lipid membranes. Maybe there were spontaneous proteins, maybe there was purely-catalytic RNA. I guess it's also a matter of line drawing. I'm OK with calling crystals life, for example. One should feel bad about breaking up big ones the same as one should fe…
The crystal thing is throwing me (a geologist) off. Basically all Earth materials are crystalline. So rocks are alive (colonial organisms I guess since they are aggregates of crystalline minerals) but the magma that they crystallize from is not alive? Or is magma alive too? What about obsidian, which is glass but compositionally identical to a crystalline igneous rock. No crystals! The Earth's crust and mantle: Cryst…
Playing devil's advocate: "crystalline" in bulk is different from "a crystal". I think the idea is that individual crystals are "alive" in that sense, and the bulk is maybe a colonial organism. Maybe quartz crystals forming in a chunk of what will soon be granite are only "alive" in the brief period where they are still growing. When the rock solidifies, the crystal "starves" and "dies", leaving only a corpse. Melting and refreezing granite would basically be composting, using formerly alive material to foster new life.
On a similar note, a dead human is "compositionally identical" to a living one, at least for a little while, so I think that's entirely a red herring. :)
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#118Isn’t the question of just-what-is-life-anyway more of a worry for linguists and philosophers rather than scientists? “Life” as it were, is a concept invented with either the intention of distinguishing “us” from the rocks around ourselves, or, if you’re being slightly less charitable, giving “us” a way to insult the, um, others. Sure, drawing some line in the sand between mice and boulders is a great idea, but it’s…
Each scientific paradigm works better when boundaries are clear and scientists don't misunderstand each other.
Hence the current astrophysical paradigm where we now have planets and dwarf planets (which aren't planets).
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#119If someone figures out how to create life, the theological and ethical consequences will be insane.
I don't think so. Primitive proto-life has little moral value, just as vegans eat plants, hypothetical super-vegans only eat blue-green bacteria, and hypothetical hyper-vegans have a 500 year deadline to be electrically powered. I don't believe in a hard barrier between life and non life, so any discrete moral function would be non-computable, and therefore I reject it outright.
Good job, thinking like a machine. Let's see if they'll have mercy on you when they decide your organs are harvestable.
Re: Tibor Gánti's ideas about the origins of life
#120Considering that the first proto-computers were not programmable, I can't help but be skeptical that the first life needed genetic material. Certainly there were lipid membranes. Maybe there were spontaneous proteins, maybe there was purely-catalytic RNA. I guess it's also a matter of line drawing. I'm OK with calling crystals life, for example. One should feel bad about breaking up big ones the same as one should fe…
I think you've got a minority opinion calling crystals "alive," although it does jibe with one definition of life that I heard: "any self-sustaining system that reduces internal entropy."
Crystals don’t reduce their internal entropy. They grow only on the interface with the media, and the portions of the crystal that become internal during this process do not change after crystallization if kept at constant temp and pressure.
In contrast, if you put a plant and its media (soil, air, water) into constant temp and pressure, the plant will continue to grow and change until it exhausts the media. (assuming the temp and pressure are conducive to life) Ultimately plants become their own media by decomposing into soil.