Earth is a living Organism

[Delta1212]

Posted Today, 12:12 PM

Lance_Granger, on 20 Oct 2014 - 09:26 AM, said:

Just plain wrong.

It may be in some cases- like bacteria

But it isn't in all cases- like any multi cellular organism- for example- us.

.

So is it just plain wrong or wrong in some cases. Can't be both.

 

 

I'm not asking you to back MY claim about the Earth. I'm ask you to backup YOUR claim that all products of reproduction HAVE to leave their source and HAVE to then reproduce. I have the burden of proof for MY claims, YOU have the burden of poor for YOURS. So is this just your opinion or can you factually back up YOUR claim?

Two points: One, life is not an objective category that exists in nature the way that, say, a photon is an objectively distinct category of "thing." The boundaries of life are somewhat arbitrarily defined and they can be fuzzy, which means there are going to be exceptions (more on this in a bit, before you get too excited about the implications of that for this topic). Two, reproduction entails making a copy of the original. A good copy of the original means that it can do all the stuff the original can do, including reproduce. If you're not making a copy of the original, it is not reproduction, by definition.

 

Now, as far as the fuzziness goes: Some people/animals are sterile. They can't reproduce or, if they do, they can't produce children which are themselves capable of reproducing. It's true that we don't label these cases as being "not alive." However, they are all of a category that, in general, retains the ability to reproduce. Most cows are capable of producing more cows. A cow that cannot is a damaged cow, not a form of non-life. There is no train that is capable of building a new train. It cannot reproduce either individually or as a category of things. It is not alive.

 

The Earth is a planet. It cannot make more planets. It certainly cannot make more planets of the same or similar size and structure to itself. Furthermore, there aren't any other planets that can do this. It's not a typical function of planets, so we can't just describe the Earth as a living but sterile planet, as that implies that there are some other planets that are alive but not sterile.

 

 

Now, how does the arbitrariness of life's definition impact this debate? Well, for starters, it's scientifically impossible to prove that something which doesn't meet the definition as laid out is alive. You can argue that maybe we should use a different definition, but that's going to come down to a consensus as to what a useful definition is, because "life" is really a utility label in science. It only exists as a category for the sake of usefulness in organizing our studies, not because of anything fundamental to the nature of reality.

 

That means that science can very narrowly define what life and the categories that are used to define life mean, and you cannot prove them wrong because there is no objective metric of what life actually is.

 

Right now, life, as defined scientifically, has a number of criteria that it must meet that the Earth does not. The Earth does not reproduce as defined in the life sciences. You can argue that a mountain is a type of reproduction if you'd like, but it's not the type of reproduction that we're talking about when we define life. A liver cell that reproduces makes a copy of itself. If a cell in an organism makes a copy of itself, that is the cell reproducing, not the whole organism. The new cell may not leave the organism, or be able to produce whole copies of said organism, but it certainly separates from the cell that divided to create it. And it is certainly capable of producing new cells of the same type. The Earth does not produce new Earths. That's the requirement for reproducing as defined for the purposes of categorizing life. Full stop.

 

The Earth is also not a cell or made up of cells. That is currently used to define life. Right there, it fails. No way to argue out of that one. It's made up of rocks.

 

If you want to describe the Earth as alive, go ahead, but you cannot describe it as being alive by the scientific definition of life, and you cannot, by the nature of the definition, prove that the scientific definition is wrong because it's a category of convenience. There is no objective measure of what life is. It's a consensus based definition and the consensus in the scientific community is that the Earth does not meet the criteria for life according to the qualities that are most useful for creating a distinction between living and non-living things.

[Phi for All]

Great post, Delta1212. And not a single nit was picked in your summation.

[Lance_Granger]

Two points: One, life is not an objective category that exists in nature the way that, say, a photon is an objectively distinct category of "thing." The boundaries of life are somewhat arbitrarily defined and they can be fuzzy, which means there are going to be exceptions (more on this in a bit, before you get too excited about the implications of that for this topic). Two, reproduction entails making a copy of the original. A good copy of the original means that it can do all the stuff the original can do, including reproduce. If you're not making a copy of the original, it is not reproduction, by definition.

 

Now, as far as the fuzziness goes: Some people/animals are sterile. They can't reproduce or, if they do, they can't produce children which are themselves capable of reproducing. It's true that we don't label these cases as being "not alive." However, they are all of a category that, in general, retains the ability to reproduce. Most cows are capable of producing more cows. A cow that cannot is a damaged cow, not a form of non-life. There is no train that is capable of building a new train. It cannot reproduce either individually or as a category of things. It is not alive.

 

The Earth is a planet. It cannot make more planets. It certainly cannot make more planets of the same or similar size and structure to itself. Furthermore, there aren't any other planets that can do this. It's not a typical function of planets, so we can't just describe the Earth as a living but sterile planet, as that implies that there are some other planets that are alive but not sterile.

 

 

Now, how does the arbitrariness of life's definition impact this debate? Well, for starters, it's scientifically impossible to prove that something which doesn't meet the definition as laid out is alive. You can argue that maybe we should use a different definition, but that's going to come down to a consensus as to what a useful definition is, because "life" is really a utility label in science. It only exists as a category for the sake of usefulness in organizing our studies, not because of anything fundamental to the nature of reality.

 

That means that science can very narrowly define what life and the categories that are used to define life mean, and you cannot prove them wrong because there is no objective metric of what life actually is.

 

Right now, life, as defined scientifically, has a number of criteria that it must meet that the Earth does not. The Earth does not reproduce as defined in the life sciences. You can argue that a mountain is a type of reproduction if you'd like, but it's not the type of reproduction that we're talking about when we define life. A liver cell that reproduces makes a copy of itself. If a cell in an organism makes a copy of itself, that is the cell reproducing, not the whole organism. The new cell may not leave the organism, or be able to produce whole copies of said organism, but it certainly separates from the cell that divided to create it. And it is certainly capable of producing new cells of the same type. The Earth does not produce new Earths. That's the requirement for reproducing as defined for the purposes of categorizing life. Full stop.

 

The Earth is also not a cell or made up of cells. That is currently used to define life. Right there, it fails. No way to argue out of that one. It's made up of rocks.

 

If you want to describe the Earth as alive, go ahead, but you cannot describe it as being alive by the scientific definition of life, and you cannot, by the nature of the definition, prove that the scientific definition is wrong because it's a category of convenience. There is no objective measure of what life is. It's a consensus based definition and the consensus in the scientific community is that the Earth does not meet the criteria for life according to the qualities that are most useful for creating a distinction between living and non-living things.

 

As far as an organism HAS to leaves its source and HAS to reproduce, I addressed this earlier in the thread; if you look up 0G phase of cells you will see that the product of reproduction does NOT have to leave its source or reproduce, but it is an organism non the less.

 

Your right, we can not define living or non living, but we can observe and compare the patterns of life. In general,Science is the study of patterns; those patterns are observed, hypothesized, tested and retested by others to see if all results are the same. So if the patterns of an organism and the patterns of the spheres of the Earth are parallel, then categorizing Earth as an organism starts to become plausible.

 

I have read back through the thread and reproduction seems to be the only characteristic of life anyone is arguing. So that leads me to believe that all of the other characteristics I have compared must be plausible. Now, to touch on reproduction one more time... I was asked to provide an example of a product of reproduction that 1) Does not leave its source and 2) does not reproduce. I immediately gave that example with 0g phase of cells, yet no one even acknowledged this. It was some how just skipped over like it was a non issue even though it was the example everyone was asking for.

 

Reproduction, in its simplest explanation, is an organism making copies of its self. So why isn't "new" Earth from tectonics considered reproduction. The new Earth is 100% comprised of the material of Earth reassemble in the inner core and then brought back out to the surface. This PATTERN resembles the PATTERN of organisms reproduction. Organism reproduction is an organism making a copy of its self from other RECYCLED materiel just like Earth does with new Earth. These PATTERS are fundamentally similar so the idea of Earth being a living organism is plausible.

 

Great points Deta1212! thank you for posting!

Edited October 21, 2014 by Lance_Granger

[Delta1212]

Aside from reproduction, the Earth also unquestionably fails on the following criteria for categorizing life:

 

It is not made up of one or more cells. As I stated before, it is made of rocks.

 

It does not grow (i.e. Increase in size in a structurally organized way)

 

It does not evolve adaptations to its environment over successive generations, in large part because there are no generations, because it does not reproduce.

 

Those are all parts of the scientific definition of biological life. The Earth does not meet any of them.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

Lance_Granger,

Throughout this thread you have done little more than attempt to redefine and misconstrue words that already have very standard definitions. Repeating your fallacies and falsehoods does not make them any more convincing. Since it is apparent that you are here not for discussion of your ideas but to preach them, staff have decided that this thread is to be closed. Please read carefully through the responses given here, for your own benefit.

You are not permitted to re-introduce this topic.