Life

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

What is  life? Is it just a biological process? Just something that gets kicked off somehow and then ends somehow?

https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/life/

I feel that Life is  induced into biological organisms through some kind of an energy that exists all around us. Otherwise there is no reason  for chemicals to suddenly jump to life.

I know scientists generally regard life as just an emergent property where certain processes just happen to get started in certain organisms. Life is just a process and death is the end of it.

In Hindu philosophy however,  a life energy called prana (Chinese call it chi, Japanese call it ki ) enters biological organisms and induces life into them.  It is prana that is life to us in the same way that electricity is life to our machines.

Once prana leaves the body the mind separates and the person is dead. So what about the soul?

We can think of it this way. The body is the hardware, the mind is the software, prana is electricity (power) and the soul is the user.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Sriram

[torridon]

"some kind of an energy that exists all around us".  Classic woo.

If there is some such form of energy, then we would be able to detect it and measure it as we can with other forms of energy.  Until such times, it remains woo.

[Enki]

Is this perhaps a case of you trying to push your own blog yet again? You must have referred to your blog at least ten times in this year alone. 

[Stranger]

What is  life? Is it just a biological process? Just something that gets kicked off somehow and then ends somehow?

https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/life/

I feel that Life is  induced into biological organisms through some kind of an energy that exists all around us. Otherwise there is no reason  for chemicals to suddenly jump to life.

Pure fantasy.

Your article is yet another one that is scientifically illiterate and sloppy. You never bother to do your homework before confidently posting nonsense as fact.

First, this is rather akin to vitalism: "Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory,^[4] or, since the mid-20th century, as a pseudoscience.^[5][6]"

Second, the quote from Neil Tyson about 'pure energy' has been widely criticised by other scientists because there is no such thing as 'pure energy'*, any more than there can be 'pure momentum' or 'pure electric charge', energy is always a property of something else or some system. I think I know what he means any why he didn't go into that on a pop science video but the fact remains that it is incoherent.

Thirdly, you say: "The idea of a Life force is speculative and philosophical in nature, but no more so than certain other scientific ideas such as say, the hypothesis of Dark Matter and Dark Energy for example."

This is utter nonsense. Apart from hypothesis, conjecture, and speculation being different things, as I'm sure I've pointed out to you before, dark matter and dark energy are pretty much the opposite of speculation, they are effects that have been directly observed but not yet explained.

Then we get: "This Dark Matter, in spite of being so abundant is nevertheless completely invisible and incapable of being detected by any of our senses or our instruments.  Right now we could be having tons of Dark Matter on our laps without sensing its existence in any way. No one has proved the existence of Dark Matter." This is yet more scientifically illiterate nonsense. Dark matter has mass and interacts via gravity, just like ordinary matter, that's how it was directly detected by our instruments.

So, having completely misrepresented conjecture in science, you move on to your own little fantasy as if it's anything remotely like the widely accepted notions of dark energy and dark matter (which it isn't), starting with a glaring non-sequitur: "If we adopt a similar point of view, it seems quite in order to speculate on the possibility of ‘Life’ being some kind of an elemental  and basic constituent of this universe given its pervasive nature and the way in which it has originated and erupted in such large numbers and in such diverse forms on earth." Followed by a silly bare assertion: "The sheer abundance of ‘Life’ and the inevitable manner in which  it manages to flourish on earth is sufficient evidence of it existing all around us in some amorphous elemental form."

We know exactly how life reproduces and why there is such diversity (it's called 'evolution') and it really doesn't require something very complicated to get reproduction for purely chemical reasons, this strand of RNA will do just that (in the right environment):

NNNNNNUGCUCGAUUGGUAACAGUUUGAAUGGGUUGAAGUAU–GAGACCGNNNNNN

The letters are standard notation and 'N' is 'don't care'. Source: Rutherford, Adam. Creation: The Origin of Life / The Future of Life.

We also have to ask why, if your little fantasy is true, life seems so keen on certain physical conditions, why there isn't any on (say) the moon.

[Edited for typos]
* And before anybody quotes E=mc² at me, the 'm' stands for mass, not matter, and you can't have 'pure mass' either, mass is also a property.

[Stranger]

Is this perhaps a case of you trying to push your own blog yet again? You must have referred to your blog at least ten times in this year alone. 

Yes, he's obviously referencing his own blog, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if the purpose is to provide a longer explanation to avoid a very long post here, but he should definitely make clear that it is his own blog that he's referencing and not an independent source that supports his view.

[Stranger]

Second, the quote from Neil Tyson about 'pure energy' has been widely criticised by other scientists because there is no such thing as 'pure energy'*, any more than there can be 'pure momentum' or 'pure electric charge', energy is always a property of something else or some system. I think I know what he means any why he didn't go into that on a pop science video but the fact remains that it is incoherent.

BTW, here is the source: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Could Aliens Be Made of Pure Energy?, which Sriram should have cited. Also note the objection from Mark Eichenlaub here: Neil de Grasse Tyson on Whether Life Could Exist as Pure Energy "You cannot isolate pure momentum or pure charge - the idea doesn't even make sense. It would be like asking for a poem that was made not out of words, but pure beauty, or a balloon that wasn't made of material, but pure loftiness. (People might use the imagery of "pure beauty" metaphorically, but you cannot literally have pure beauty existing on its own.) The same is true for energy..."

See also: Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy.

[Bramble]

What is  life?

'Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We are all of us looking for the key. And I wonder how many of you here tonight have wasted years of your lives looking behind the kitchen dressers of this life for that key. I know I have. Others think they’ve found the key, don’t they? They roll back the lid of the sardine tin of life. They reveal the sardines, the riches of life, therein, and they get them out, and they enjoy them. But, you know, there’s always a little bit in the corner you can’t get out. I wonder is there a little bit in the corner of your life? I know there is in mine!'

Alan Bennett

[Sriram]

What is light? It is radiation. But is it matter or energy? Similarly electrons and strings. What are they....matter or energy or what exactly?

The word energy is often used (never mind the dictionary) to mean any kind of ..well..substance ..that is not matter.

Prana is experienced every day by millions of people who practice yoga and meditations. It is in and around us all the time. The mind is also believed to be made of prana.

Science may not have identified it yet....but that means nothing. 

 

[Stranger]

What is light? It is radiation. But is it matter or energy?

No. It's a quantum field associated with photons, which are the gauge boson for the electromagnetic force and not considered to be a matter particle. Although, if you'd followed my link you'd realise that 'matter' is not an exactly defined term in physics, it depends on context.

The article I posted (#5) directly explains why 'matter or energy' is a false dichotomy: Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy.

Similarly electrons and strings. What are they....matter or energy or what exactly?

Yet again I have to explain the same basics to you! String theory is purely hypothetical. The current view is that electrons are excitations of a quantum field, in this case they are often considered to be 'matter' particles in the sense that they are fermions.

The word energy is often used (never mind the dictionary) to mean any kind of ..well..substance ..that is not matter.

Only in tacky science fiction - not in real physics.

Prana is experienced every day by millions of people who practice yoga and meditations. It is in and around us all the time. The mind is also believed to be made of prana.

So, just a subjective feeling. Useless for determining the truth of the matter.

Science may not have identified it yet....but that means nothing.

Since you've provided not a single hint of any actual objective evidence, not even vaguely indicative evidence, it means that it's just blind faith and/or a baseless guess.

[Sriram]

What is Dark Energy?  In wiki....."dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales".

[Stranger]

What is Dark Energy?  In wiki....."dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales".

From the same article I cited before (written by a particle physicist):
And Dark Energy? It was recently discovered that the universe is expanding faster and faster, not slower and slower as was the case when it was younger.  What is presumably responsible is called “dark energy”, but unfortunately, it’s actually not energy. As my colleague Sean Carroll is fond of saying, it is tension, not energy — a combination of pressure and energy density. So why do people call it “energy”? Part of it is public relations. Dark energy sounds cool; dark tension sounds weird, as does any other word you can think of that is vaguely appropriate. At some level this is harmless.  Scientists know exactly what is being referred to, so this terminology causes no problem on the technical side; most of the public doesn’t care exactly what is being referred to, so arguably there’s no big problem on the non-technical side. But if you really want to know what’s going on, it’s important to know that dark-energy isn’t a dark form of energy, but something more subtle. Moreover, like energy, dark-energy isn’t an object or set of objects, but a property that fields, or combinations of fields, or space-time itself can have.  We don’t yet know what is responsible for the dark-energy whose presence we infer from the accelerating universe.  And it may be quite a while before we do.

Also, from the Wiki article:
Two proposed forms of dark energy are the cosmological constant^[12][13] (representing a constant energy density filling space homogeneously) and scalar fields (dynamic quantities having energy densities that vary in time and space) such as quintessence or moduli. Contributions from scalar fields that are constant in space are usually also included in the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant can be formulated to be equivalent to the zero-point radiation of space, i.e., the vacuum energy.^[14] However, scalar fields that change in space can be difficult to distinguish from a cosmological constant because the change may be prolonged.

...

The vacuum energy, that is, the particle-antiparticle pairs generated and mutually annihilated within a time frame in accord with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in the energy-time formulation, has been often invoked as the main contribution to dark energy.^[27]

So, again, we are talking about a property of something, the space-time manifold itself, scalar field(s), or the virtual particles that exist in all space due to the energy-time uncertainty principle.

[Sriram]

All that is fine  but we are discussing a mere word.  Certain words undergo a change in meaning over time and need not continue to be used only with a specific meaning.

As I have said....'energy' in this context means something that is not matter and could exist in an amorphous state. Lots of people use it in that manner world over. You can use some other word for it if you want.

[Stranger]

All that is fine  but we are discussing a mere word.  Certain words undergo a change in meaning over time and need not continue to be used only with a specific meaning.

Sorry Sriram, but the term 'energy' has a very precise and well defined meaning in the context of science. It's meaning has not changed, nor is it likely to in the context of science because technical terms are not like words in general, colloquial language. You can't unilaterally make it mean something else because it doesn't suit your superstition - especially when you are presenting things on your blog that claim to be about science. Trying to do so makes your claims woo merely by the fact that you are misusing technical terms.

You can no more change the meaning of 'energy' than you can (for example) 'momentum', 'electron', 'electric charge', or 'gravity'.

As I have said....'energy' in this context means something that is not matter and could exist in an amorphous state. Lots of people use it in that manner world over. You can use some other word for it if you want.

The fact that lots of people make the same mistake (partly due to pop science and tacky science fiction) doesn't make it valid. Your context, by the very nature of your blog, when it claims to be borrowing from, and making comparisons to, science, should be science itself, and you should use technical terms correctly. In fact you'd give yourself much more credibility if you actually pointed out common misconceptions like this.

In short, it's you who needs to find a new word for what you mean, so long as you're writing about science. Otherwise you are simply telling everybody who does understand the science, that you don't know what you're talking about.

[Sriram]

"some kind of an energy that exists all around us".  Classic woo.

If there is some such form of energy, then we would be able to detect it and measure it as we can with other forms of energy.  Until such times, it remains woo.

There is no 'woo' here. It is something anyone can experience with a little practice. Try yoga and meditation.

 

[torridon]

There is no 'woo' here. It is something anyone can experience with a little practice. Try yoga and meditation.

There is no woo in yoga or meditation.  They can be useful mind practices. It is reaching for some sort of nebulous unidentified 'energy' to explain it that is woo.

[Sriram]

The basic principle behind Yoga and meditations is the flow of prana and the health of the chakras.

[torridon]

Again, that is a religio-cultural interpretation of how it works.

[Sriram]

Again, that is a religio-cultural interpretation of how it works.

Its not an interpretation. That is the basis on which yogic science was developed. And it has nothing to do with religion.

[torridon]

Its not an interpretation. That is the basis on which yogic science was developed. And it has nothing to do with religion.

Prana and chakras are concepts from Hindu philosophy, not science.  There may be health benefits from yogic meditation but that does not imply any scientific validity behind these concepts.

[Sriram]

Prana and chakras are concepts from Hindu philosophy, not science.  There may be health benefits from yogic meditation but that does not imply any scientific validity behind these concepts.

Yes....they are a part of the Hindu philosophical system. They are not science in the sense of being empirically tested using instruments.

But they can be experienced using certain methods and there is a methodical system by which it can be taught to other people.

The effects and benefits of the practices can be experienced and measured.     

[Maeght]

Yes....they are a part of the Hindu philosophical system. They are not science in the sense of being empirically tested using instruments.

But they can be experienced using certain methods and there is a methodical system by which it can be taught to other people.

The effects and benefits of the practices can be experienced and measured.   

The effects and benefits can be measured, but not the cause if those effects and benefits, which is the point.

[Sriram]

Do you measure the effects of gravity or its cause?

If the effects are predictable and repeatable and can be produced by suitable training, then it means that the causes are also well understood.  If not, the science would not have developed or even survived over the centuries.

[torridon]

Do you measure the effects of gravity or its cause?

If the effects are predictable and repeatable and can be produced by suitable training, then it means that the causes are also well understood.  If not, the science would not have developed or even survived over the centuries.

Gravity is observed; meanwhile theories about gravity attempt to explain it. Likewise, meditation can have therapeutic outcomes and prana and chakras are an early Indan attempt at formulating an understanding of the underlying mechanisms.  Medical science however does not recognise the validity of prana or chakras and offers other explanations for why meditation works in ways that are evidence-based, for instance, neural plasticity - regular meditation has been shown to induce structural and functional changes in the brain, increasing the thickness of brain regions associated with attention, emotion regulation, and self-awareness and these changes may contribute to improved cognitive functions and emotional well-being

[Stranger]

Do you measure the effects of gravity or its cause?

If the effects are predictable and repeatable and can be produced by suitable training, then it means that the causes are also well understood.  If not, the science would not have developed or even survived over the centuries.

Hilarious! You really are living in your own little fantasy world. Of course we measure the effects of gravity. That's why a theory about the cause, that had worked incredibly well for centuries (and is still good enough for most applications today), was shown to be fundamentally wrong by Einstein.

The idea that prana and chakras are science is absurd. As Sam Harris showed (Waking Up), the practice of yoga and meditation, even when taken very seriously, works fine without accepting any of the original superstitions that were used to 'explain' it. The original ideas were never nearly as good an explanation of anything as Newton's theory of gravity was, yet Newton was wrong.

Basically, like many historical ideas, the practice of yoga and meditation turned out to be useful memes, that's why they survived.  If you had bothered to read the relevant chapter in The Selfish Gene that you cite on your blog, you might not have misunderstood the concept of meme as always being bad and irrational.

[Outrider]

The basic principle behind Yoga and meditations is the flow of prana and the health of the chakras.

The basic principle behind yoga is moderate exercise in a controlled environment providing benefits in improved cario-vascular activity, muscle and joint flexibility and, in some instances, social interaction.

Claims of additional benefits are out there, but unsubstantiated, no matter that they predate the physiological understanding that led to these being recognised.

Meditation, as with most of the rest of what gets lumped in with 'mindfulness' these days, is a bit of a mixed bag. Meditation appears to work for a subset of people to the extent that it makes them feel better about things and they self-report improvements in happiness, motivation, clarity of thought and a range of other benefits, but a significant portion of people who try it find that it does nothing for them.

O.