It’s always relative to a certain environment. Human beings and most animals can’t survive outside of the current biosphere. In that respect we’re no less independent from certain peculiar conditions than viruses are. We both depend on other living organisms in order to survive.
Maybe redefine life against a continuum of how unlikely, complex the necessary environmental conditions are that sustain it?
Some autotrophic cells might rank at one currently known bound while higher animals would be on the other end.
Maybe redefine life against a continuum of how unlikely, complex the necessary environmental conditions are that sustain it?
Yes, sorry, that’s another thing I missed off the write-up. Rather than “life” being a binary “you’re either a living organism or you are not”, it might be better looked at as a scale. One possible measure being the range of environments in which you are a viable searcher; another being the percentage you control of the parts of the environment that are relevant to your replication.
The alternative viewpoint suggested was rather than asking how alive a single organism is, ask what is the required organism+(other organisms or part of the environment) that should be considered to have the necessary attributes to count (collectively) as alive.
It’s always relative to a certain environment. Human beings and most animals can’t survive outside of the current biosphere. In that respect we’re no less independent from certain peculiar conditions than viruses are. We both depend on other living organisms in order to survive.
Maybe redefine life against a continuum of how unlikely, complex the necessary environmental conditions are that sustain it?
Some autotrophic cells might rank at one currently known bound while higher animals would be on the other end.
Yes, sorry, that’s another thing I missed off the write-up. Rather than “life” being a binary “you’re either a living organism or you are not”, it might be better looked at as a scale. One possible measure being the range of environments in which you are a viable searcher; another being the percentage you control of the parts of the environment that are relevant to your replication.
The alternative viewpoint suggested was rather than asking how alive a single organism is, ask what is the required organism+(other organisms or part of the environment) that should be considered to have the necessary attributes to count (collectively) as alive.