Recent content by kuzao

ah ok i understand :) that would be a similar approach as in post 89, or? there i also had problems with using species as description, i think neither species nor system is good enough. group of similar entities might be a bit better but still not good. anyone got a good idea? i still...

dave do you think he/she meant that? then it would back my argument that reproductions isn't a usefull thing to inculde in a dfinition of life, or?

im sorry but i don't understand your argument. could you elaborate?

hmm how about replacing metabolizing with take up and process materia. a bit difficult to answer. let me ask something in return. is a nucleus alive? he is sorounded by a wall can replicate even has sometimes dna and rna present. while the cytoplasma most offen doesn't even posses dna. so...

hmm is still think that transcription and translation or the presence of rna and dna at the same time ist the most fitting definition. however i also think that this is a very strict biological /scientific definition. the 'self replicating' definition sounds a bit philosphical to me. if...

but self replication is quite dangerous that would leave all strile organisms out of the definition so many crops would count as life anymore so many sterile organisms etc tehy can only grow on their own thei can't replicate. you could get around that at least a bit by saying you apply...

as i said before you could take this definition and ridicule it by using it for something like a vial where you put the nececary agents in. this however would be same as finding a definition for an airplane and then trying to ridicule that definition by carying around all the neccecary parts...

i belived i made it clear in post 62. i guess i was wrong. sry for that. :) i see the short commings of this definition my self. there can or better there could be exceptions but i still think this is a good starting point and defines life in its essence (but may be not in total... still...

ok maybe i assumed too much. let me make it absolutly clear: whenever i talk about translation and transcription i mean the biological transcription and translation which is a) copying dna to rna and b) rna to poly peptide. i thought evrybody realizes that these are chemical processes...

totally agreed :)

we are talking about viruses and life here of course taht implies that we talk biology here. do you realize that transcription and translation are synonymes for the presence of rna and dna? how can chosing the two elemental functions of an organism as lifes definition be a circle argument...

as i said before transcription and translation are terms of molecular biology and in this context i used them. do you understand what translation and transcription means? there are no things which can translate and transcribe and are artificial (at least to my knowledge and if you don't...

first i think its futile to find a definition for something we don't even know about yet. that's just discussing because we like to read our on writings... however i agree on the point that it is unlikely. to be exactly the same. but how exactly the same does it has to be to be still called...

@dave oh far from beeing true. my statement could be read as 'life is what is based on these two functions' (still doesn't sound flashy) one could see it as a circular argument IF these were the only functions present in organism and thus they could be called the only biological functions...

@ dave while we seem to agree on the answer our way of coming ot that conclusion seem to be different. no offense meant but could it be that it is a while ago since you studied molecular biology? as for transcription and translation, i used these as biological terms. they are defined as...