Is The Universe Alive?
Ever wonder about the nature of life itself? What is it, what are we, what are we doing? It's astounding that such complex systems as humanity can be extrapolated from the need for some sugary amino acids to copy themselves. Life itself is a serious issue to adress in my Extra-terrestrial Life class (Aliens for short). One of my favorite definitions of life comes from an article appropriately entitled "Life Itself"
Life is a self-perpetuating, self contained chemical phenomenon that extracts or manufactures high energy nutrients from its environment, excretes waste material of lower chemical energy, and surfs the energy difference between food and shit to go on living.
--Lonely Planets by David Grinspoon
Apparently not every surfer is from California.
So is that it? By that definition, every human action, thought, and feeling are the results of an overgrown chemical equation. I wonder if there isn't somthing significant about a larger group of beings, a network of life. For example, we are made up of a network of cellular life which is in turn made up of a network of organelles, in these nested systems all parts are alive. Does this mean that by extension a house is alive because it is made up of a network of inhabitants? What about a city or country or planet?
Assuming that we human beings are not the sole proprietors of this enormous universe, can we fairly call the whole thing alive?
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Comments
Sounds like a very interesting class. Is there any information about it online?
I love the idea of a house being alive. It has a certain appeal, especially because the house wouldn't last forever without its occupants maintaining it: you can go to ghost towns or even Roman ruins, but just like a skeleton in the desert the shells of buildings are slowly decaying. On the other hand, buildings that the occupants have used continuously (the oldest ones I can think of being in the Vatican) can be kept 'alive' by maintenance, just as an animal maintains its structure by replacing cells when necessary.
Thank you for the food for thought.
Rather than a house being alive--a house can't self perpetuate-- there are other systems made up of human beings that could be considered. You have societies. They are made entirely of humans and the interactions of humans, so should societies be considered alive? There's a lot of debate about life and when things begin to be considered life, but when do we stop considering things to be life? Also, the animal doesn't maintain its structure by replacing its cells, the cells maintain the animal by replicating themselves.
There's a theory out there called the Gaia Theory that says basically that the planet is alive and that it is a system that is self-sustaining. This guy John Lovelock wrote a book about it called Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth that would be in the library right now if it wasn't on my desk. You can find stuff online about it though.. cool shit.
I also have another book by this guy, Stephen Grand, who made this game called Creatures that is essentially a really good artificial life simulation turned game. I actually own this book and if you would ever be interested in reading more about artificial life and the methods this guy used to make the game, I'd more than happy to lend it to you. It's a really good book about a-life and stuff.
You hit upon a subject here that I've been looking at a lot lately so I could go on about this stuff for a while. But I don't want to clutter up your comments section any more than I already have. Definitely check out the artificial life stuff though, I think you'd find it interesting