What is life? A video (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 01:15 (3420 days ago)
A video that explains exactly, in its beginning, how I view the role of cells in life. Some the latter part is just fun philosophy. But its main point that it takes a whole being to create a true living being is right on. None of the separate parts are alive by themselves. They live by using the information in the genome to run all processes that create life. It emerges:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOCaacO8wus
What is life? A video
by George Jelliss 
, Crewe, Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 14:52 (3419 days ago) @ David Turell
According to this Scientific American article there is no real distinction between life and inanimate matter! -http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/12/02/why-life-does-not-really-exist/-I just came across it on Twitter and thought it fitted in coincidentally with your latest thread.-I agree that there is probably no absolute line of distinction, but on the other hand there are various places where rough lines can be drawn to aid our understanding. Just as we distinguish a bald man from someone with a head of hair.
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GPJ
What is life? A video
by David Turell , Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 18:04 (3419 days ago) @ George Jelliss
George: According to this Scientific American article there is no real distinction between life and inanimate matter! > > http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/12/02/why-life-does-not-really-exis... > I just came across it on Twitter and thought it fitted in coincidentally with your latest thread. > > I agree that there is probably no absolute line of distinction, but on the other hand there are various places where rough lines can be drawn to aid our understanding. Just as we distinguish a bald man from someone with a head of hair.-Thanks for your contribution. Glad you are following. I had seen this article before but tended to ignore its pointless discussion. No one has really defined life to anyone's satisfaction. As the video shows a fully complete living organisms exhibits life, but broken down to individual non-living molecules, suddenly there is no life there! You are quite correct, no 'absolute line of distinction'. but when all the molecules are perfectly cooperating life appears. It is a concept of an emerging functional entity. As in the famous line about pornography, 'I can't define it, but I know it when I see it'. And the only way we know how to make life is to use life's components, a la Craig Venter. -From the Sci Am article:-"Recognizing life as a concept in no way robs what we call life of its splendor. It's not that there's no material difference between living things and the inanimate; rather, we will never find some clean dividing line between the two because the notion of life and non-life as distinct categories is just that—a notion, not a reality. Everything about living creatures that fascinated me as a boy are equally wondrous to me now, even with my new understanding of life. I think what truly unites the things we say are alive is not any property intrinsic to those things themselves; rather, it is our perception of them, our love of them and—frankly—our hubris and narcissism."-It is more than perception. It works to independently support itself and perpetuate itself, thus separating itself from viruses.