Naked Science Forum

On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: jason@NeuroBirch Tech on 31/12/2014 06:07:55

Title: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: jason@NeuroBirch Tech on 31/12/2014 06:07:55
We are an Organism.

Now don't get me wrong that is a much more amazing thing than you may believe it to be.

Among our most brilliant achievement is the way we adapt to survive. We have manipulated the many resources around us to cook our food, write our emails, shower, and almost endless more. Have you ever stopped to look around and wonder where these resources actually are?

I have been researching the mechanics of the mind, computer sciences, languages and basically anything i can get my hands on in the category of interacting with technology at the developer level. It has come to my understanding of the world, that energy flows through everything, which allows it to exist depending on the forces at work around it.

Certain aspects of your daily life are moving continuously, and science has told us that everything is made out of molecules. Gravity retains those molecules into a solid mass. We have learned how to shape these solid objects into usable tools and equipment. Our lives are only here because of these adaptations to the resources around us. All with their own cellular structures.

As I see it, our planet is a part of a larger organism, a galaxy being a cell itself. There I said it. Have only said portions of this to my Girlfriend and while she doesn't think I am crazy(keeper) but she doesn't know the same information I do.

In essence, we are bacteria, part of a larger system. You can look at smaller systems through microscopes and see the part of a minuscule universe. Telescopes offer us the ability to see the epic scope of the living force that is nature.

Nothing about this is new. But I'm not sure if it has been put into one text box like this before. WE as a species are important to a larger role. We affect the healthiness of this grand architectural mass of life. We know this.

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Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: alancalverd on 31/12/2014 06:33:38
Quote
Gravity retains those molecules into a solid mass.

Not true. Solids are bonded by electrical forces, wobbly cellular entities are constrained by their cell walls, themselves determined by intramolecular forces. Gravity is far too weak and unidirectional to account for the shape of anything that is not a liquid or gas.

Quote
WE as a species are important to a larger role. We affect the healthiness of this grand architectural mass of life. We know this.

Not true. Homo sapiens is important to other living things either as a competitor, a predator, an exploiter, or a source of food. Apart from a tiny amount of mechanical stuff hurtling through the cosmos or poking about in the soil of Mars and the Moon, there is no evidence of the importance or indeed any effect of homo sapiens or any other life form outside of the thin green slime that coats the rocky parts of this one planet.

Our insignificance is truly awesome.
Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: jason@NeuroBirch Tech on 31/12/2014 07:31:51
Great observation but that is the base of our knowledge, how do we know that what we provide for the world as a whole doesn't reflect back on how its health is? We live on a giant spherical mass that has energies flowing throughout it, and we tap into these energies. If you took anything and put it under a microscope you see it's stages of life as a cycle.

What is stopping that cycle being somewhat life ours?
We put a measurement to the very thing we place place value on,
which is time.

I will keep continuing on this path of research until I find what I can clearly see is there, in my perspective of the world anyhow.
Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: Ophiolite on 31/12/2014 14:38:31
Jason, this notion is a common one that occurs to many people at one time or another. (I ran with it when I was twelve or thirteen.) There  are some superficial similarities between cells and the galaxy, but an objective consideration of the facts show a far greater number of fundamental differences.

You clearly have an imagination - an important trait in science. Why not use it to learn more about the basics rather than waste your time on this jaded and trivially debunked notion?
Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: cheryl j on 31/12/2014 15:32:53
Living things have many feed back loops and control systems that help maintain homeostasis and allow an entity to act as a concerted whole. That's what I see missing from theories about the earth or the universe being a living thing. There are examples of "cycles" I suppose, like the water cycle, but I don't think equilibrium processes are really the same as feed back loops. Maybe in a system with an input of energy, like from the sun, equilibrium process could "mimic" the thermodynamics of feed back loops. But the cycle or equilibrium is not set by some "need" - it's does not rain simply because the desert needs it, or stop raining because of a signal sent when organisms have enough water. We're just lucky if or when it all works out in our favor, and if it didn't most of the time, we wouldn't be around to notice. 

For some arguments for and against the Gaia hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: alancalverd on 31/12/2014 16:33:23
If the spatial argument is unconvincing, consider the temporal one. The earth has been around for some 4.5 billion years, and the universe for at least 3 times that long. Man has been around in a recognisable form for less than 250,000 years. We are at most a ripple on the surface of time.
Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: jason@NeuroBirch Tech on 01/01/2015 07:50:26
I understand the spatial and temporal arguments alancalverd, and I am not trying to intrude on others beliefs. Each and every one of us see this planet through our own set of filters, warping the brilliant canvas of life into an unimaginable number of individual perspectives. Through the lenses of my belief filters, we were needed for a reason, otherwise we wouldn't be no? As the world turned over the course of the human existence, we learned the ways of the land, through the senses we had developed. We survived for an unfathomable amount of time despite our lifespan. I am just looking towards an existence on this planet that we last for as long as we need to, sustained indefinitely. Thank you for the feedback, it opened my mind a lot further and provided me with an experience.

In the name of knowledge & growth,
Jason
Title: Re: The Basis of Life on Earth
Post by: alancalverd on 01/01/2015 09:54:21
Reason implies ulteriority, for which there is no evidence or logical support.

Homo sapiens could indeed live sustainably on this planet but shows no sign of wanting to, because we have allowed economic growth to become an objective instead of a means to achieve an objective.

Don't worry about intruding on my beliefs - as a professional scientist, I can't have any!