Can a life form be made up of only liquids and gases or only gases?
Can something be intelligent and yet not be a life form? For example, the being would be capable of speech with humans or movement (as examples) but would be the only one of its kind. It would not produce offspring and wouldn’t have been produced itself sexually or asexually.
Like a computer, maybe ? Or an early Adam and Eve ?
By your definition it would kind of have to be something created by another intelligent life-form, as it itself is not part of any particular chain-of-being. Even more, it not having the ability to reproduce, therefore to perpetuate its own mechanisms, it wouldn’t have any specific use or need for the ability to speak or move other than, say, to provide amusement for its designers.
That’s an interesting stretch of the mind.
Sci-fi spoiler below!
In ACC’s Space Odyssey series, there are gaseous lifeforms living in Jupiter, so the possibility has at least been explored.
I was wondering from a perspective of whether it were chemically possible. I think current science would say no, but I am not sure. I think current science says life requires proteins and protein reactions.
In order to even begin answering this question, you need a definition of life.
Good luck with that.
I’m using the definition life is something that can reproduce itself. I think that is the one most commonly used.
“Living organisms are autopoietic systems: self-constructing, self-maintaining, energy-transducing autocatalytic entities†in which information needed to construct the next generation of organisms is stabilized in nucleic acids that replicate within the context of whole cells and work with other developmental resources during the life-cycles of organisms, but they are also “systems capable of evolving by variation and natural selection: self-reproducing entities, whose forms and functions are adapted to their environment and reflect the composition and history of an ecosystem†(Harold 2001, 232).
While I don’t have any problems with that as a definition of life, astrobiologists, who are more qualified to discuss such matters than I am, might disagee. Indeed, most astrobiologists seem think that leaving the question open is the best approach.
And, for those who prefer video, a quick lecture
gasps Never!
Asking a philosopher to leave a question open would be like asking the devil to not to do an evil deed.
For the sake of discussion it’s necessary to have a definition. Since few of us on this website are astrobiologists we use common definitions as opposed to the ones used in astrobiology.
Also, I’m not really sure how anyone could work with the definition that there is no definition. Do you have any suggestions?
DNA is not the only substance that can store information required for replication. A hard drive can too. And maybe we could consider evolution the changes that occur to the children hard drive copies made during the copying process. So, maybe life can exist without proteins (DNA). I might take that part of the definition out, ‘information needed to construct the next generation of organisms is stabilized in nucleic acids’. What do you think?
DNA is actually a type of unconscious quantum access point and can ‘shift’. So, there can exists lifeforms who are able to shift between and through orgone/phyiscal matter states/dimensions.
A new definition is needed for what we call life.
Rust replicates ; it is not life. Replication is the act of electrons bonding to form more of whatever. That whatever is aslo compounds that form cells. This appears as if cells are replicateng. Replication is not life. Life as we call it comes from non-life.
Also the sense of self (awareness or consciousness) jumps out from some kind of electron activity in the brain.
We totally come from non-life. Or is there no life on this planet.