Mind Over Matter
Registered Senior Member
Why should life exist in any form, if gravity is dominent and demands everything be drawn into an entity?
Why do living organism exist at all?
- Thread starter Mind Over Matter
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Accidents happen as well as mutations. Just a guess. :shrug:
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Why do living organisms exist at all?
My response to that is to question the word 'why'. It seems to be asking for some cosmic purpose, a divine motivation, a conscious intention, that living organisms satisfy. I try not to think that way since it's anthropomorphic, imagining human action as it was the model and explanation for all non-human states of affairs. So in my opinion, the 'why' question rests upon a philosophical category-mistake.
(My speculation is that it's our human propensity to think like that that's one of the explanations for the paleolithic origins of religion.)
So the question as I see it isn't so much 'why' living organisms exist, it's 'how' they exist. What were the prebiotic circumstances upon which life's appearance was causally dependent?
I don't think that science knows at this point, though there are lots of hypotheses and informed speculations.
My own view is that things more or less analogous to earth life may exist in many places across the vast universe. If that's so, then "life" probably takes many different anatomical and biochemical forms. We may find that our carbon-based, cellular organized DNA-encoded genetics are only one example of a vast number of highly diverse chemical-replicators busily growing out there.
And that idea in turn suggests that "life" (or more accurately its many analogues) has quite likely had many different independent origins that may have occurred in very different physical, chemical and causal circumstances. So I suspect that the 'how' question doesn't have a single answer.
My response to that is to question the word 'why'. It seems to be asking for some cosmic purpose, a divine motivation, a conscious intention, that living organisms satisfy. I try not to think that way since it's anthropomorphic, imagining human action as it was the model and explanation for all non-human states of affairs. So in my opinion, the 'why' question rests upon a philosophical category-mistake.
(My speculation is that it's our human propensity to think like that that's one of the explanations for the paleolithic origins of religion.)
So the question as I see it isn't so much 'why' living organisms exist, it's 'how' they exist. What were the prebiotic circumstances upon which life's appearance was causally dependent?
I don't think that science knows at this point, though there are lots of hypotheses and informed speculations.
My own view is that things more or less analogous to earth life may exist in many places across the vast universe. If that's so, then "life" probably takes many different anatomical and biochemical forms. We may find that our carbon-based, cellular organized DNA-encoded genetics are only one example of a vast number of highly diverse chemical-replicators busily growing out there.
And that idea in turn suggests that "life" (or more accurately its many analogues) has quite likely had many different independent origins that may have occurred in very different physical, chemical and causal circumstances. So I suspect that the 'how' question doesn't have a single answer.
Mind Over Matter
Registered Senior Member
Consider also the significance of the fact that the universe can and does generate contradiction and conflicts. Amazingly, it can also utilize these conflicts by re-converting them into functional contributions to other processes.
Yes - I will just keep looking for sincere and honest answer to my question. Nothing more.
But one thing is for sure, the "why" question has an single answer.
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Because the laws of physics allows it.
I don't think that is what gravity "demands".