I know that this is perhaps a bit extreme. a rock probably cannot in any way be said to be alive. but I do sometimes think that a solar system for example, is a lifeform, its equivalent heart is the sun, it had a moment when it was born and it will have a moment when it ceases to exist. each part of the solar system is doing their job and say if planet Mars one day suddenly disappears the system will not longer be sustained because the gravitation will be disturbed greatly. comparing this sort of system to the life of an animal, which every organ is doing its job which contribute to the whole animal and so on, do you think that a solar system can be said to be alive in any way similar to an animal life?
yan
Sure the rock is alive, if it believes itself to be.
Just what is the job of the solar system? Not all the parts always function together as a coehesive whole. Remember not too long ago you had a massive asteriod collision on Jupiter. Wouldn’t a living being be able of regulating that sort of thing? And what of galaxies that crash into each other? Why can’t they see a collision and avoid it? The sun, being a star, will go nova eventally swallowing up the first two planets of our system and boiling our oceans. Wouldn’t a living being of such sophistication be able to prevent such a thing from happening?
I will agrue this from my exposure to classical Greek philosophy. For something to be alive, it must have a soul. According to Aristotle for a thing to be living it must have at least one of the following: it must have nourishment, engage in movement and sense perception, and finally thinking. It could be said that the Universe as a whole engages in nourishing itself by recycling energy and matter. You could also say that it has movement. According to these criteria alone, one can come to the conclusion that the Universe itself as a whole is a living being. However, there may be more evaluation criteria which I have not considered, and I leave that for someone else to add. I think it’s presumptuous for me to make that assertation without any further proof or reasoning.
Finally, no, a rock does not have a soul and therefore it is not alive. It does not have movement or nourishment or sense perception or thinking. Thinking is a pure experience claim. If the rock could think it would be doing more then just sitting there. It would find a way to tell us it is thinking.
Life does not exist. It is the vaguest of terms. There was a post in anouther thread about what defines life, and the answer that i saw was…
The problem is actually nailing down what that property is. And as far as i can see it will be as illusive as a poka dot monkey (which doesnt exist). Let us take a cell for instance. A cell is a little self contained chemical reaction. Okay, so what about that self contained chemical reaction is life? Is it chemical reaction A over here? Or perhaps it is chemical reaction B over there? Or mabye its just having chemical reaction A and B happening in the same self contained area. Furthermore what is it about these reactions that simply they are being done inside of a membrane as opposed to a beaker on a scientists desk that labells it as alive. I think that there is no difference. Life is just anouther one of thoes human terms that doenst really have any meaning outside of our own existance, we use it to judge according to our standarts what is alive or dead. If you take a step outside of human existance, there is no life, and there is no death. We are no more “alive” then the dirt under our feet.
Frighter, that was a truly inspiring critique of essentialism.
That’s basically the argument Alan Sidelle makes on the question of whether there are natural kinds of things in nature, apart from our ability to categorize them:
“[natural kinds are] explained in terms of us, in terms of our carving up of the world, and not in terms of an independently existing modal structure of reality.â€
Amen.
aleema wrote:
not really. the human soul consists of 4 parts for aristotle, the nutrition part, the desire, the obedience to the intellect and the intellect. fulfilling all of these parts, to the greatest extent, is the point of life. so, to fulfill the the nutrition part is only a quarter of what needs to be done. more noteworthy, desire and obedience to the intellect can both partake in the intellect, making these able to be rational, along with the intellect (of course). it’s an interesting way to view the soul because aristotle seems to suggest that life is at once primarily rationally-driven (as the nutrition part alone does not bring life) and secondary because there is clearly a hierarchy, with the base being the nutrition bit.
anyway, i’ve never really excepted such theory…
to a limited extent i agree with what frighter wrote
but wonder/hope that this can perhaps be put in opposite terms and yet still hold true? i’m thinking of something along the lines of liebniz, and state that yes, everything is alive because everything has perception. what distinguishes my perception from a rock is that i also have apperception and apetitition (the abilities to be consciously aware and the ability to effect/accept change). these are, in my mind, quiet strong abilities and to write them off as equivalent as grains as sand seems to reduce the issue to a strange level. nonetheless, if this idea were to be followed through, one would have to conceive that life is simply the synthesis of several different awearenesses, perhaps made possible only by chemical reactions in the self.
damn awareness and its problems for materialists like me 
I sometimes think that awareness is something that is very closely tied to the basic materials of the universe, and that reactions (not nessicarily chemical) occur between them that cause as you said, different levels and/or types of awareness. Unfortunatley the only evidence of this being the case would be drugs and how they effect our awareness. I think this raises interesting questions about our universe… I wonder what its like to be a hydrogen atom?
which goes through more interactions than us? 
perhaps i should ammend my statement to include the ability to go through such expereinces of perception and awearness, while still retaining our identity. but i suppose that raises the question of identity, but i’m sure we can agree that me and you have stronger identities than a hydrogren atome?
Look, first of all, perhaps all this colliding, collapsing and explosions regarding stars and other stuff is supposed to be general processes that take place inside this universal body. Then why would this living universal body want to prevent that? We don’t have to assume that this universal body has to be like us exactly, it could be different.
Secondly, this universal body cannot nourish itself by recycling the energy and matter inside it, it would need some outside energy source to achieve that in the first place, that’s just basic commonsense. Personally I think that light is the food energy that fuels this universal body. It has movement for sure and I believe that this movement is there not to recycle but to process food to nourish let’s say the earth etc.
Thirdly, the rock is not life from our perspective, but from this universal body’s perspective, the rock must have life although not a soul. When we distinguish between life and non-life, we label things from our perspective, but from another’s point of view what we call dead could very well have life.
Fourthly, you said yourself that there is movement in the universe and that also might add to the fact that the universe could be alive or life. So, the fact that earth moves, even though it’s a gigantic piece of rock from our perspective, but from this universal body’s perspective it would be life, it has to be. So, the rock would too. Isn’t the rock part of the earth? So don’t say in that case that a rock is not life.
Finally, the ROCK in my view is not alive but from this universal body’s perspective it has to be life, but I don’t think it can think for it has no consciousness or soul but it is still life from this universal body’s point of view, it is just programmed to be what it is.
I too have noticed corelations between the cosmos mainly the solar system and the structure of an atom. a circle seems to be a univeraly stable form of movement
the orbits of electrons around the nucleus of an atom are not in any way like the orbits of planets round the sun actually. the first stable orbital in an atom is circular, the second orbital is … difficult to describe without a picture but it’s not circular at all. furthermore, electrons don’t go round and round in their orbit, the orbit only defines where the electrons are most likely to be found but you can’t say for definite where the electrons are at a given time.
Yan
everything is just one thing. keeping yourself separated can cloud the mind. atoms are made of empty space. you and all things are connected.
As far as I see it, all things have a life span. From, say flies, very short, to tortioses, 100+ years, up to planets and galaxies, billions of years +. etc.
Rocks could be seen as flakes of skin from our bodies, so flakes of the crust of the living planet.
If I cut off my finger, I can not say it is alive. Infact I can remove quite alot of my body and still be called alive, but the removed parts would not.
As far as I can tell the only organ in the body NOT able to be theoretically transplanted into another body is the brain, as it is, what I would call, ‘The Main Organ’.
Things having souls.
Well I never have been sure exactly what this thing called the soul is, and I’m a bit confused to if I have one or not. I usually take it to mean ‘the feeling bit’ in the middle of my chest.
As for awareness, I can only say that other things are aware due to MY level of awareness letting me realise it is so.
If my level of awareness is very poor compared to say ‘a rock’ then until my level of awareness rises, I stand little chance of understanding the world as the rock does.
The Cosmos, solar system and comparison to atoms and elements etc.
For along time now I have been toying with the idea that planets, solar sytems , galaxies are part of a bigger structure, that relates to our understanding of the physical make up of matter.
I imagine the big bang as a moment of conception. The universe is expanding, it is maybe soon to hit puberty, then into early adulthood, when it will slow down it’s expansion and become generally stable, not expanding or contracting. Then into old age it will begin to contract and decay until it finally dies.
My thoughts are that there IS an edge to our universe. It would not be solid to us.
If we travelled to outside our universe and looked back on it, then maybe we would see the living creature we are part of. Maybe it would be a human being (and God made man in his own image etc) but it just as well could be a rock.
Then again when we develop REALLY powerful microscopes, maybe we’ll be looking at things many times smaller than what we are aware of now, maybe even tiny humans.(or rocks!)
As within, so without.
As far as me being alive, well, I’ll take your word for it, but seeing that I have no awareness of being anything else, what do I know?
SageNonions.
Just take it from me that the soul is the mind of the person. Thoughts and the spirit is the same thing. That’s why brain transplantations are impossible because the soul or mind is specific to a body. I just read yesterday, some philosopher/s considered mind to be “eternal.” I would believe that. Our mind is just a fraction of the Higher Mind or Higher Consciousness.
I think “alive” needs clarity. I would imagine alive means the widely accepted definitions, otherwise we are talking about something other than “alive” (or redefining “alive” which would actually be its own word.)
Do plants think? They are considered alive.
Plants do have locomotion - said to use wind to spread.
I would say that if the atoms in rocks weren’t as compact and moved a bit quicker they would move a bit faster, but few (if any) remain in the same place forever… Molten lava - liquified rock, a little easier to move that way.
It seems plants share some charcteristics with humans, but not all, like thinking, as well as rocks share some charcteristics with humans and plants. The conscious mind is more and more unique as we move toward mammals, but does not appear to be a requirement for “alive”
I could be quick to say a rock is not alive from dictionary definition, but let’'s try to draw some parallels:
metabolism - erosion?
growth - too slow to notice?
reproduction ?
This is tough considering a random rock. I think we need to consider the source of a random rock. Right now I am having a hard time building a case for a rock being alive.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Personally I believe that everything is alive.
I think that ‘life’ as a word means different things for different people, so it might be of more use to use other words that have more objective agreement, or try to reach an agreement of what life is.
If you think that a rock is not alive, then I would ask the question as to how we as human beings got here. Assuming that the Big Bang theory is correct, then we evolved out of some primordial soup, out of stuff that some might say is not alive. How is that possible, for life to come out of what is not alive. I don’t believe it is, but rather that we are a more highly evolved form of life than the rock, unless we are stone drunk.
You know you are wrong. Here I’ll prove it. My heart, liver and brain etc., are all alive, would you agree? Or would you say they are dead? And yet they DO NOT replicate themselves. Replication is not a necessary condition to define life. And for this precise reason I say that even though plants replicate and are LIFE but they don’t have consciousness like we do, or in other words, they don’t know that they are alive, they have no awareness, they are just programmed to perform like the earth revolves much like our heart performs. So, the rock and earth are life but have no consciousness.
In essence what I’m saying is, since replication is not a necessary condition for defining life, therefore, plants can replicate and be life but have no consciousness because they are attached, they are much like the arteries and veins of this universal body. Ugh! That sounds awful, but whatever.
BeenaJain.
To many folks just take it from others. Me I like to be given ideas to think through and try and come to some sort of conclusion of my own. But thanks for your view on it.
UnderstandTheArt
My understanding of the universe is that ALL is in motion, I would go as far as to say that once something loses any type of motion at all, it ceases to exist.
You imply that plants do not think, at least not in the way humans do, I am assuming this is an asumption, and that you have no proof either way…If you have I’d love to hear it 
For all humans ‘cleverness’, we tend to assume that we are the most advanced life form on this planet, seperate and above the rest, while I am of the opinion that we just might be toddlers in the play room, smashing everything up to find out how it works, then chuking it on the floor for someone else to pick up.
Is thinking a really advanced thing anyway? Other animals communicate with each other in ways that seem far advanced of our own. Sure we have what we would call languages, but I feel this has arisen because we are so poor at comunicating in other ways, the ways in which other animals excell. After all why do we do the things we do, for what purpose?
If birds did indeed develop from dinosaurs(?) just how many millions of years of evolution do they have over us? For starters they have managed to actually defy gravity, well at least use it for their benifit. Think about it, they actually FLY, it’s awsome!
Michael.
I agree with what you are getting at in part. All is alive, the rock came from lava which came from the soup. early “life” came from soup(?) rocks(?) plants animals etc, maybe one long chain of evolution that leads back, (maybe plants and animal life forms have a common ancestor? IF you refute this please provide proof to why it is not so!) right to the beginning.
BUT, why are we more more highly evolved than a rock? I just don’t get it, it seems like a very arragant statement to me. Maybe we just lack the understanding?
Whitelotus
neither a rock nor solar system is alive in any sense of the word.
Ok it seems to me what you are saying in your following text is that you replace the word replication with the word life. Life IS replication.
But to me Life is that spark, that undefineable thing, that twinkle.
How can you say rocks nor the solar system do NOT pocess that twinkle/spark etc. IF you have proof they don’t then I’d love to hear it.
As far as rocks or the solar system replicating, I have no idea. But again I’d love to see evidence either way.
BeenaJain
Again, proof please that plants DON’T have a conciousness like we do, or they don’t know they are alive, AND that they don’t have awareness.
Some think I’m totally mad, but to me things seem really messed up.
None of the above is meant as a personal attack. I’m just as guilty as any on assuming things are so. Just lately I’ve begun to question more and more about science and humans and just how great we think we are.
I feel that alot of things I take for granted and just accept need to be re addressed.
And yes I do walk around in stunned silence alot of the time 
Are rocks alive? interesting question! The problem seems to be three fold:
(1) what is a rock (2) what rock are we talking about (general or particular case) (3) what is meant by ‘alive’ or rather how would one go about defining life?
We can pass over (1) straight away, we all know what rocks are, well sort of (im no geologist so i cant give a precise definition) but generally we can all agree that we know in vague terms what rock is (that lump of hard stuff in my garden.) it would be great if someone could give me a definition of rock.
(2) this question seems all most as ridiculous as the first but consider this: if we could have a sensible experience of a rock, that in which, we are acquainted with some faculties(or functions) of the rock that we may infer to mean the rock is alive then the problem is solved. Needless to say there may be a rock which is alive which none of us has experienced. This of course would be one way to the solve the problem (perhaps we should all go and talk to our rocks, or someone elses rocks perhaps they’re not doing it properly…)
(3) what does it mean to be alive, well there needs to be a distinction here between ‘being alive’ and ‘displaying life.’ To illustrate: i may display signs of life by, for example, jumping up and down with a tea pot on my head and shouting ‘come on england.’ I may also of course, be hidden from view and be unobservable in anyway and still be alive!
The importance of this may not be clear, rocks in themselves (so far as i know) do not display and faculty of life (and yes i am aware that i have not yet defined life) and of course this is why the question arises ‘are rocks alive’ - because we do not observe them to be, or rather, assume them to be so. yet just because they do not appear to be alive does not necessarily mean that they are not (consider myself in my unobservable state hides under the bed)
i may display life through my actions (functions if you will) and then upon observing my actions you may conclude that i am alive… yet rocks do not display any signs of life: ‘what display of actions/functions constitues an inference to life?’ >>>
This question i believe is quite simple. it has already been noted in this thread that motion is a necessary condition for life. this i do not believe is true, using this one could posit that a rock moving is alive! just in the same way as a dog moving is alive: in the case of the rock the movement is not intentional i.e. it does not will itself to move; it is acted upon by external forces. where as the dog may will itself to move as it encounters external forces. there is a difference here, the rock makes no observable judgement whereas the dog does. This can be observed by pushing a number of rocks and pushing a number of dogs; no matter how many rocks u push the same thing will always happen, it will move or not move where as the dogs will display different responses depending upon the dog. Furthermore, to state that movement is life would mean that my fone is alive as it consists of protons electrons etc etc that are in a constant starte of flux. Which seems innately wrong.
Hence i choose willful movement over mere movement. This i posit as my first condition for life: willfull movement (this can be seen with plants as well as animals, plants lean towards light sources)
The second condition i deem neccesary for life is creation and or reproduction, by this i do not mean bonk-bonk-make-baby rather that the object in question creates or reproduces itself on a biological level. which as far as i know does not happen with rocks. For an example consider the reproduction of cells in humans, growth in all organisms etc
Hence i conclude that rocks are not alive they may be but i cannot infer this as they do not display the two signs or conditions that i believe constitute life: willfull movement, creation and reproduction (i.e. growth).
I appologise for bad spelling, bad grammar etc etc.