Define Life - another perspective
This is a follow-up to my earlier post about how we define a living being.
Earlier I talked about viewing chemical reaction systems as life forms and then about viewing collections of individual life forms as more complex life forms.
In this post I will explore the temporal aspect of life - the fact different life forms having different life-spans.
In nature we find different life forms having widely varying life spans. Right from tiny organisms which have life span of a few minutes or a few hours, to amazingly ancient trees, some of which are more than 5000 years old.
Also one has to speculate about the time perception of life forms. Does a life-form's perception of time change with one's life span? Do some insects, for example, perceive they only survive for a day? Or do they perceive their one day life as an entire lifetime?
Would an insect with a one day life span look at human beings (without having an insight into the true lifespan of humans) and perceive us as immortal beings? Beings which do not demonstrate any visible change in many lifetimes of their kind? Definitely, if the insect had the capacity to think that far, that's what it would think. It probably perceives trees something similar to mountains, because they are static and exhibit even lesser change than moving beings.
Now think about life forms with life-spans which dwarf the human life span. And not just a hundred times over (like some ancient trees), but 10,000 times over perhaps much much more. Would these beings not appear te be Gods to us? Now just suppose that these beings are immobile. And furthermore that their movements are proportional to their lifespans i.e. they move, react, perhaps even perceive very very slow. Would they appear to be statues to us? Frozen in time? What if we never recognized them as life forms because we have never known their form? Puts a slightly different spin on our view of our world.
Are the mountains really only just mountains? Do they not change shape over extremely long periods of time? Do they not get born? Do they not grow or diminish? Are they alive (and not just to the sound of music [joking])? Perhaps.
Just something more to think about.
Earlier I talked about viewing chemical reaction systems as life forms and then about viewing collections of individual life forms as more complex life forms.
In this post I will explore the temporal aspect of life - the fact different life forms having different life-spans.
In nature we find different life forms having widely varying life spans. Right from tiny organisms which have life span of a few minutes or a few hours, to amazingly ancient trees, some of which are more than 5000 years old.
Also one has to speculate about the time perception of life forms. Does a life-form's perception of time change with one's life span? Do some insects, for example, perceive they only survive for a day? Or do they perceive their one day life as an entire lifetime?
Would an insect with a one day life span look at human beings (without having an insight into the true lifespan of humans) and perceive us as immortal beings? Beings which do not demonstrate any visible change in many lifetimes of their kind? Definitely, if the insect had the capacity to think that far, that's what it would think. It probably perceives trees something similar to mountains, because they are static and exhibit even lesser change than moving beings.
Now think about life forms with life-spans which dwarf the human life span. And not just a hundred times over (like some ancient trees), but 10,000 times over perhaps much much more. Would these beings not appear te be Gods to us? Now just suppose that these beings are immobile. And furthermore that their movements are proportional to their lifespans i.e. they move, react, perhaps even perceive very very slow. Would they appear to be statues to us? Frozen in time? What if we never recognized them as life forms because we have never known their form? Puts a slightly different spin on our view of our world.
Are the mountains really only just mountains? Do they not change shape over extremely long periods of time? Do they not get born? Do they not grow or diminish? Are they alive (and not just to the sound of music [joking])? Perhaps.
Just something more to think about.
posted by the grim sleeper at 8:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home