Surely you're not going to accuse me of saying that smoke and fire are alive. LOL.

Smoke might not fit but a fire isn't a million miles away from life.

Consider;
Life consumes resources, replicates and spreads and produces waste.
A fire consumes resources, it replicates and spreads as it consumes them and produces waste.

The properties of a fire are not unlike those of a bacterium, all be it on a simpler scale and yet bacteria are, last I checked, considered 'alive'.

[quote name='laztrezort' timestamp='1341978627' post='4957878']
Everything "obeys" these (as far as current scientific knowledge goes), like rocks, clocks, oranges and the vacuum of space. This just sounds like anthromorphism to me.

I think you're getting me backwards, because of how I was coming at it yesterday. What I was saying earlier today was that all processes -- dead or alive -- "compete" to "obey" these laws. It's not just "as far as current scientific knowledge goes", because it's not just a theory, it's a law.[/quote]Sidetracking a bit, I don't think this follows "because it's a law" - I think you're misunderstanding "theory" and "law". In science, theory isn't the same meaning as the common usage of "theory" (i.e., an educated guess), it means a model that's supported by evidence. A "law" on the other hand is something that's a simple statement or rule - e.g., a simple relation - based on observed behaviour. So the laws of thermodynamics are called because they are each a statement on how things behave, as opposed to being a scientific model. Theories and laws aren't rungs in a ladder of correctness - laws aren't things known to be true anymore than theories, and theories never turn into laws. A law could still turn out to be wrong, indeed, some laws are known to be only approximations (gas laws). Not that I think this is likely true of thermodynamics, but it isn't anything to do with being labelled a law or theory (and it seems odd to say that something must be universally true, just based on how humans decide to call it).

For example, the law of gravity is the equation that gives the force between two objects. The theory of gravity is the model that describes how this happens (e.g., Newtonian, or General Relativity).

In science, theory isn't the same meaning as the common usage of "theory" (i.e., an educated guess), it means a model that's supported by evidence.

And now if we could get every Anti-evolution/Inteligent Design nutjob to realise this life might get a bit easier.... That or they stop believing in the theory of gravity and float away...

[quote name='mdwh' timestamp='1342014621' post='4958023']
In science, theory isn't the same meaning as the common usage of "theory" (i.e., an educated guess), it means a model that's supported by evidence.

And now if we could get every Anti-evolution/Inteligent Design nutjob to realise this life might get a bit easier.... That or they stop believing in the theory of gravity and float away...
[/quote]

Somehow I don't think it would matter - these types of pseudo-science arguments are never grounded in reality or common sense anyway. If the common usage of "theory" went away, there would be a whole slew of other nonsense arguments put in their place (although perhaps it might make it more difficult to convice school boards to buy into it).

I think you're getting me backwards, because of how I was coming at it yesterday. What I was saying earlier today was that all processes -- dead or alive -- "compete" to "obey" these laws. It's not just "as far as current scientific knowledge goes", because it's not just a theory, it's a law. Of course, you're still ignoring the spontaneity aspect, which sounds like so much reverse anthropomorphism, so it can't be quite right either. Surely you're not going to accuse me of saying that smoke and fire are alive. LOL.

My anthromorphism comment was mostly due to ascribing to these processes a "purpose" (as in a directed plan or goal, or some sort of reason other than naturual laws for existing). Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "purpose".

My qualification of "as far as current scientific knowledge" was to leave open the possibility that such laws are open to modification by later discoveries - and mdwh pretty much summed up what I would have said about "law" and "theories".

I'm not sure what you are getting at with "spontaneity" either, unless you are touching on free will or something. For the record, I tend toward the philosophy of Mechanism, and am fairly convinced that free will is an illusion, an artifact of how our brains work.

So, rather than ask "what is the purpose of life" or "what does life aim to achieve", a better question would be "what does life achieve".

Of course now that it's been brought up, I thought about what may or may not mark the boundary between living and dead matter. I'll reply tonight in-depth, but here's a quick list of things:
- Structure, which implies low entropy and repeated states. Stable relationships. Not too many relationships though. Ie. Not a fire, not a blacl hole. A boundary (shell) as manifestation of system concept.
- Use of mass and light for sustenance and to duplicate.
- Disproportionate response to stimuli. A cheezeburger's photons and aromatic components do not give enough energy to a human to compensate for the movement of a human arm involved in grasping the cheezeburger.


So, basically fire and rocks and fridges and stars are not alive.

Well, if there is god(s), probably more specifically a creator of the Universe, then life could have some "higher" meaning itself. If there isn't any such thing as the divine, it doesn't have an inherent one, but one's personal life might still have meaning, you just have to define it yourself

So, perhaps the purpose of life is to obey the second law of thermodynamics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, just like any other process involving burning material is.

To me the answer is in the question. The purpose of life is to live. Why else do we eat, breath, protect ourselves and protect our young.

To me the answer is in the question. The purpose of life is to live. Why else do we eat, breath, protect ourselves and protect our young.

The "Selfish Gene" by Dawkins posits a way to look at organisms as basically just machines being used by replicators (genes) to copy themselves. I'm probably not doing the book or idea justice, but it is an interesting read.

The purpose of life is to live, so we can breed. And breeding is the means for our genes to replicate. So in a sense, replicating molecules "built" us to carry them around in relative safety, and programmed us with the drive to survive and breed in order to facilitate their replication. Living things are nothing but glorified, clumsy tools of replication.

"We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world"

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

If humanity has a purpose, than, I'd guess we are the product of intelligent design. If that is the case, then who, or whatever designed us is pretty damn smart, so I'd assume that we are currently fulfilling whatever task we were created for. So, our purpose is to breed, consume, and pollute until this planet is inhabitable

Maybe life is just this gross film that gets all over a planet every so often, and humanity is the scrubbing bubbles of teh universe. I figure we should have done something to finish our job in teh next few thousand years. ...it's not like the universe is in a rush anyway.

So I'm gonna say we are anti-life, ...and god or whatever must be very proud of us

...and Conan is way off, cause killing people just slows down teh process.