Patterns can't explain life's complexity

[C C]

https://iai.tv/articles/patterns-cant-ex..._auid=2020

INTRO: Perry Marshall challenges the case made in Michael Levin's article last Thursday that patterns are alive, and that all life forms and thought are living patterns. Marshall argues that bacteria and viruses are more complicated than we imagine, but this is not a basis to claim that all lifeforms and thought can be explained by patterns.

EXCERPTS: Levin says if there are other beings in the cosmos or in the earth, we might not recognize them as beings. They might not recognize us either.

That surely is true, but I say the problem is far more mundane, and much closer to home: We’re not even giving life itself enough credit. ... All living cells are cognitive; cells thrive in communities; bacteria have words like “you” and “me” and “us” and “them”; they use quorum sensing to assess whether they have enough troops to mount an attack.

[...] Michael Levin showed both frog and human cells, removed and placed in new situations with no precedent in history engineer brand new solutions in days, or even minutes – without natural selection. ... One blade of grass is 10,000 years ahead of any human technology. So while I heartily endorse Mike Levin’s plea for us to see that minds and thoughts may take forms vastly different from our own, I insist we begin with the plants and animals in our own back yards, and the cells that are literally right under our noses... (MORE - details, minimal ads)

[Zinjanthropos]

https://iai.tv/articles/patterns-cant-ex..._auid=2020

INTRO: Perry Marshall challenges the case made in [url=https://iai.tv/articles/patterns-are-alive-and-we-are-living-patterns-auid-2919?_auid=2020
]Michael Levin's article last Thursday[/url] that patterns are alive, and that all life forms and thought are living patterns. Marshall argues that bacteria and viruses are more complicated than we imagine, but this is not a basis to claim that all lifeforms and thought can be explained by patterns... (MORE - details, minimal ads)

I think I get what he’s saying. Basically there’s a difference between life and the life form. IOW all matter is capable of being part of a life form. If that is true then there is a super abundance of potential for living things to come into being. So does every inanimate(?) particle have a chance of being part of a life form?

Edit: All life forms consume dead life forms to stay alive. Does the magic happen inside a life form, the consumed material suddenly becoming part of a living thing again?

[C C]

[...] All life forms consume dead life forms to stay alive. Does the magic happen inside a life form, the consumed material suddenly becoming part of a living thing again?

“Life does not exist”: The deceptively tricky task of defining life
https://bigthink.com/life/life-does-not-...ning-life/

KEY POINTS: In the 2024 book Life As No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker explores the thorny problem of defining life. Walker explains why our current definitions of life fall short, arguing for a new and experimentally testable theory for what life is. In this excerpt from her book, Walker overviews how the boundaries between life and nonlife began to blur as humans began to learn more about chemistry and its underlying physics.

EXCERPT: . . . At the 2012 meeting of the American Chemical Society, in a session on the origin of life, Andrew Ellington proposed a radical theory: “Life does not exist.”

[...] In stark contrast to the views of modern physicists and chemists, scientists used to believe life exists as a separate category from matter...

[...] While modern materialists like Andy, Sean, and Jack regard the known properties of matter as sufficient for explaining life, the vitalists had quite the opposite view. They believed that life does, in fact, exist, but it cannot be explained in terms of the properties of matter....

[...] What modern science has taught us is that life is not a property of matter. Physicists and chemists see very intimately what the rest of us who think life exists cannot: there is no magic transition point where a molecule or collection of molecules is suddenly “living.”

Life is the vaporware of chemistry: a property so obvious in our day-to-day experience—that we are living—is nonexistent when you look at our parts.

If life is not a property of matter, and material things are what exist, then life does not exist. This is probably the logic Andy was going for. Yet here we are... (MORE - details)

[Magical Realist]

As a child, I remember trying to take an insect apart and then failing to restore it to its original state. I was too surprised at the time to even feel upset.

When I was a kid I used to resurrect unconscious (dead?) flies by sprinkling salt on them. I never knew why this worked, but it did. Sometimes it's better not knowing how the magic works.

[Zinjanthropos]

Life is the vaporware of chemistry: a property so obvious in our day-to-day experience—that we are living—is nonexistent when you look at our parts.

It’s like our parts are a prosthetic. An artificial body for some disembodied thing that needs the universe just to survive. Like a person with no legs needs a wheelchair.