Skip to main content

what is an organism?

How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition?

Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter:

(Complexity) Many diverse parts
(functional) acting for the sake of the whole

I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that.

Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and ongoing maintenance (homeostasis again).

Oh well, it's worth thinking about more: that's a sure thing.
Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
Isaac Asimov defined life as a temporary and local decrease in entropy. That's true, but doesn't get to the heart of the matter. By that definition, stars are alive.

As you point out - self-replication is essential.ience
11:14 PM
Leo White said…
I like Asimov's answer, but I think it needs to be paired with homeostasis. That is, the equilibrium of an organism seems to consist in constantly maintaining what would be a disequilibrium in a non-living thing (thinking here of how neurons constantly work to pump sodium outside the cell wall and potassium inside [or is it vice versa {how I wish I was able to stay awake in Biology class a mere 32 years ago!!!}]).

In any case, could you tell me more about the star thing? It's probably very obvious but let's think about it...
9:25 PM
Leo White said…
Maybe stars don't act for the sake of the whole... don't they eventually blow up? Animals don't do that (unless you put one in a microwave).
10:04 PM
Unknown said…
Not all stars explode. The main difference is that for stars, their held together by their own gravity - accidentally, if you will. Whereas life is held together by its own "design". That's why I don't think Asimov's definition is adequate.

I think what you said about homeostasis is equivalent to the entropy definition.
10:34 PM
Leo White said…
Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's fascinating how life, without violating the law of entropy, is in a sense a kind of exception to a general pattern. Sorta like how an animal, without violating laws of motion such as gravity, is likewise able to diverge from the general pattern through its self movement.
5:20 AM
Leo White said…
Here's a question: doesn't an atom have many parts that act for the sake of the whole? Or do atoms act for the sake of becoming part of another whole? What is the difference between this relation of parts and whole and that between organs and organism
9:46 AM
Unknown said…
In my opinion, life has to go along with self-replication, or it's not life. Diverging from gravitational equilibrium, while significant in animals, doesn't quite get there - solar flares, for example, spontaneously release from the sun, so it seems. Atoms, while they hold together, don't self-replicate, and thus don't really increase "order" over time.
1:54 PM
Leo White said…
I agree with you regarding organic life being coextensive with reproduction, but my question is whether it is part of the definition or a property that follows logically from that definition. Trivial distinction, perhaps, but I am interested in it. I am particularly interested in understanding what features of life as we know it have to do with entropy, or rather, with the need to cope with entropy in order to keep on being alive. Sounds crazy, but what if there was an alternative universe without entropy: if it had living things, what would the properties of those living things have to be? At this point, it sounds a little looney, I know, but my real interest in asking this counterfactual is to understand what is essential to life in this, entropy saturated universe.
8:32 PM
Leo White said…
Here is my latest shot at answering the question, "what is an organism?"
Answer: something that can interact with its environment without losing its identity.
Being able to do so in a world in which the laws of thermodynamics are such as they are requires a special kind of homeostasis--the kind that would be disequilibrium if it weren't a living thing. And to achieve this homeostasis, one requires nourishment. And since things break down and die, only those life forms that reproduce will endure. But reproduction and nourishment both involve types of growth. There, I think I've got it: a definition from which one can infer life's properties. Yeehawww! i-R-smart---yessirreeee!
9:38 PM
Unknown said…
But that definition still seems to include stars.
12:09 PM
Unknown said…
More on stars - one important distinction, which you were getting at with regard to homeostasis, is that stars don't take in energy from their environment. All their energy comes from their own "tank" - when it's empty, they die. Unlike life, which actually converts energy originating from an outside source.
12:13 PM
Leo White said…
Lemmee try again. Organisms interact adaptively with their environment: that is, so as to preserve their being.

Don't stars interact only with themselves? (apart from gravity)

Don't they act non-adaptively?

I'm not used to thinking about stars, so your help is greatly appreciated.
11:12 PM
Leo White said…
The primordial interaction is appropriation (nourishment).
7:23 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....
Post a Comment
Read more