If you cut a flower from a plant…
1- Is the flower still alive?
2- Is the flower dead?
3- Is the flower in a process of dying?
in the process of dying. it can no longer receive what it needs from its roots. its analogous to a person having both of his lungs punctured: he’s not dead yet, but what’s necessary for him to continue living can no longer be provided.
Good. But… wasn’t the flower dying in the plant? I mean that, the decaying of the flower begun when the flower started its existence which commonly it is known as being alive.
Tough question. It’s still alive while it can do 5 things.
biology.about.com/od/apforstuden … 82105a.htm
Can a rose by any other name do all that or is it dead?
A better question is now that it is no longer alive is it therefore dead? And if not is it dying, I think it’s dying but define that? Define the extremes and then the spectrum, cessation of all biological function that sustain a living organism to? A flower is still able to reproduce at least no?
I don’t think any of your answers sum up whether it is a,b or c, at any given moment it is something but nothing sure IMO.
It’s annoying to not have n answer but sometimes the answer is simply that there is none.
Define at which point a flower is dead,dying or alive? I don’t think anyone can do that, but I’ll take my hat off if you can…
Depending on context: yes, yes and yes.
if that’s your response, then “is it still alive?” and “is it dying?” are the same question.
To take this even further, couldn’t we say that 1 and 3 are synonymous, and 2 is inevitable either way?
no. it’s inevitable that the flower WILL die, yes, but 2 asks if it IS dead. there’s a difference.
That’s why I said “inevitable”–
The death of the flower is sure to occur, at which point it IS dead. There’s a difference if you criticize my choice of words and ignore the obvious intended meaning. You know what I meant. I don’t feel like mincing words today…
well, regardless, we can all at least recognize that it was pointless to say that. 
Totally. Maybe you and the rest of ILP can get together and discuss my pointlessness over some s’mores or something. Make it a bonding experience.
Can the flower be at those three points at the sime time?
Hm. Does it follow from the fact that an organism will die, that it is dying? I’m inclined to say that when life is thriving, it is not dying. In what sense are organisms in constant decay? It is not “all downhill” from the moment life comes into existence. There is a period of growth and increasing ability before the organism’s eventual “decay”.
Thus all dying organisms are alive, but not all living organisms are dying.
As part of the plant, the flower is a living part of nature. In that nexus the flower lives on in the seed and through the pollination of bees. Cut off from the stalk, the flower represents a fleeting moment of beauty or love that we wish to own forever.
OK. I meant the existence of the flower as a full bloom flower, not a flower bud.
It is not necessarily my response. But “is it still alive?” and “is it in a process of dying?” can they be the same question? And if that is the case, where do you include death, in the process of dying or in the process of being alive?
Ah, okay. Right, the flower is probably (I don’t know the details of the blooming plant’s life cycle) either at or past its peak. So, generally speaking, it will deteriorate until death. What does this mean to you?
Seems to me that the concept of death is present in every plant that has a full bloom flower.
“The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” moves thought to sex and creation, death and destruction, as read and lived.
fen.bilkent.edu.tr/~tanatar/theforce.htm
This force moves through us as we walk and breathe on the turning earth. But every axle has a still point at its hub, in Shiva’s ring of fire, where the dance is. As T. S. Eliot put it in “Burnt Norton,”
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
Flowers in the fields dance in the wind. Rose petals float down streams of air and water where every eternal instant moves in place. There is deep quiet love in the fire that does not burn but shines its rays through black so deep it negates itself in an ineluctable birth, while Death plays chess with the earthwalkers and the jongleurs perform their diversionary tricks. And the fool about to trip over the cliff has the face of the flower whose roots won’t hold, but airborne joins the flow that is another dance.