In the section labelled “Vida Enigmatica”, I talk about all aspects of life in general. I attempt to tackle all of the tough questions about societies and civilisation. But it’s recently occured to me that I haven’t discussed life itself. One of the most difficult questions to answer are “what is life?” and “what is the purpose of life?”.
I suppose that before we can effectively answer why is life here and what is it’s purpose, we’d better be sure about what life actually is. How can we possibly answer what the purpose of life is if we don’t even know what separates us from the non-living? The trouble is that whenever we attempt to answer what consitutes life, we arrive at all sorts of vague definitions of what life is, for example:
“the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body”
“a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings”
“an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction”
“the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.”
“the sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, esp. metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment.”
There are many definitions of what consitutes “life”, but for every one of these sub-classifications, there are exceptions:
Adaptation to the environment. At what rate must life adapt for it to be considered alive? If we rapidly create an artificially toxic environment, no life form will be able to adapt in time and hence it will die. The same can be said for the “reaction to stimuli” argument. The entire Plant Kingdom is at a great disadvantage here – although they can adapt relatively quickly to their environment, plants can only react to stimuli very slowly. Viruses do not appear to react to anything. In fact, I suspect that “adaptation to the environment” and “reaction to external stimuli” are really disguised as the same thing, albeit at different rates of application. [Read more →]
Tags: Science Simplified, Vida Enigmática by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Leontien Zijlaard van Moorsel is one of the most successful and versatile female cyclists of modern times, competing in both track and road racing events. She was born in Boekel, the Netherlands in 1970. One of the best looking female riders both on the velodrome and in the peloton, she is well known for her make-up, lipstick and painted nails.
Between 1990 and 1993, she won 4 world championships. During that time she also won the French Tour de l’Aude Cycliste Féminin” twice before suffering from depression and anorexia nervosa in 2004. She then made a comeback in the late 90’s overcoming her mental ill-health to win a further 5 world championship races between 1998 and 2003. At the Sydney 2000 Olympics she was one of the most victorious athletes, winning three gold medals and one silver in various cycling disciplines. [Read more →]
