I am just a special type of non-living thing
When I was in my final year B.E , I told my friends Sarangan and Chandrasekhar that a living thing is just a collection of different types of molecules mostly made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen. Nothing more, Nothing less. As expected they did not like the idea. I did not have anybody to discuss about this. I could not find any book talking about this idea. I put the idea to dormancy.
Seven years later, when I read "Consciousness Explained", Daniel Dennett had written this - "Only a theory that explained living things in terms of non-living things could explain life at all." I got a lead from this for further continuing on my idea.
I just wanted to see if there is any magic in living things compared to non-living things. I could only find characteristics like reproduction, homeostasis, metabolism etc which can all be explained to a greater extent today by using science. We also now have scientists who are trying to create artificial DNA, artificial life, artificial meat etc.
What is then special about living things compared to non-living things? Wherever I start I could only come to the conclusion that living things are systems which decrease entropy inside them. So that is the only speciality of living things from the physics point of view.
I later found from google searches that our dear Erwin Schrodinger
had already talked about living things decreasing entropy inside them. It also said that he had written about this in his famous book "What is life?". I was only knowing about this book for motivating Watson and Crick in discovering DNA. It is an awesome 31 pages book available here.
I was happy that I had found in 2007 that "I am just a special type of non-living thing obeying the laws of physics like any non-living thing". But Schrodinger had found this out in 1944 :-) So when will this be accepted and taught as a fact?
Seven years later, when I read "Consciousness Explained", Daniel Dennett had written this - "Only a theory that explained living things in terms of non-living things could explain life at all." I got a lead from this for further continuing on my idea.
I just wanted to see if there is any magic in living things compared to non-living things. I could only find characteristics like reproduction, homeostasis, metabolism etc which can all be explained to a greater extent today by using science. We also now have scientists who are trying to create artificial DNA, artificial life, artificial meat etc.
What is then special about living things compared to non-living things? Wherever I start I could only come to the conclusion that living things are systems which decrease entropy inside them. So that is the only speciality of living things from the physics point of view.
I later found from google searches that our dear Erwin Schrodinger
had already talked about living things decreasing entropy inside them. It also said that he had written about this in his famous book "What is life?". I was only knowing about this book for motivating Watson and Crick in discovering DNA. It is an awesome 31 pages book available here.
I was happy that I had found in 2007 that "I am just a special type of non-living thing obeying the laws of physics like any non-living thing". But Schrodinger had found this out in 1944 :-) So when will this be accepted and taught as a fact?
Comments
2. Who defined the terms Living and Non-Living?
Answer is Man, falling under Living category.
So what stops him from stating those terms and in fact any terms in the way he wants it? :)
In the younger age I used assume that it is possible, in fact I didn't know that fish(tadpole) in the stagnated rainwater comes from the eggs, but believed to have been created from non living materials! Later I started asking, my dad whether If I create a robot that would build(reproduce) similar robots, will that be considered as life..
Recently when I heard about nanotechnology, I wondered whether it would be possible to create living cells, life and what not.
But mostly my dad used to ask me that the chemicals/atoms in a living cell/organism and its dead body is not very different but it seizes to live, so will it be possible to restore it to its living state?
I guess it may have relation to the matter/wave duality here. That apart from the atoms and molecules, some other form of energy is required for life, if we can find how to produce(convert from something else), we will be god.
1. We, humans have feeling, emotions, the source of which would be brain, also, the conciousness.. does any non-living thing has those? then what are the params on which you classify humans (or any living thing as a mere extension of non-livings)?
2. laws of physics and chemistry apply to all, as end of day, everything is comprised of the same basic substances (or moelcules, atoms etc), so higher or lower entropy (or anything else) can't be a reason to label a living thing as non-living..
Enjoi reading your blog.. its all new different theory... keep blogging..
It is just the way living things are structured which is special compared to non-living things.