I know I am a "living system" because . . .
I know I am a "living system" first and foremost because I have a
consciousness. My consciousness gives me the power to practice
discernment and discernment helps me stay alive. Most living systems
are mobile and my own mobility helps to affirm that I am alive. Life and
light go hand and hand and my attraction to light also affirms that I am
alive. Living systems are also quite responsive to sound and my
relationship to sound also affirms that I am alive. Living systems are
notorious for producing waste and my body's need to produce waste
also affirms my living attributes. Lastly, the way I metabolize energy
and produce heat in the process is also a major expression of a living
system quality on this planet.
I have been giving a lot of thought to the various characteristics of life and keep trying to disprove each of them. I will only be satisfied when I find a definition for which I cannot find an analogy in a "non-living" system. The only characteristic that I am still trying to wrap my head around, and neither of us mentioned in our post, is reproduction. I like your examples and hope you do not mind if I search for exceptions in my response. 1) consciousness giving the power of discernment: how do we know when water moves one way or the other around a boulder in its path whether it is discerning or simply following a law of nature? How do we know when we exercise the power of discernment whether it is due to consciousness or also a byproduct of a complex set of interacting laws of nature that produces our response. 2) Mobility: our ability to be mobile relies on outside forces such that we take in nutrition, transform it into energy, and are only mobile in so long as our energy lasts. When wind interacts with inorganic matter, if strong enough it will produce motion in that matter. When the interaction of that force and its subject ends so does the motion. We think of our ability to move as somehow inherent in us, unlike the inorganic matter, which relies on outside forces. However, our ability also relies on the outside nutrition sources that interact with us to produce the force of our energy. Are these scenarios so different? 3) Your attraction to light is affirming: I feel truth in that and yet, light in the form of an electric surge of lightening is drawn to an inorganic metal rod. A mountain reflecting the light of sunrise or sunset certainly seems like an attraction. Light reflects off of an interacts with all surfaces living or otherwise. 4) Response to sound: Sound is vibration. everything responds to vibration, alive or otherwise. 5) Producing waste: waste is the unusable byproduct of a transformative process. Chemical reactions produce byproducts. Really the notion of waste is like referring to weeds. Weeds are just plants that we don't like. Waste is just one of the products of transformation which occurs in living and non-living systems. 6) metabolizing energy and producing heat: One of the definitions of a chemical reaction is the production of heat and a state of energy change.
ReplyDelete