Why just biological life?

[Sheep221]

Living is everything that can be reproducted from parental organisms, via births, hatching etc whatever, it is nowhere said that what is living has to be biological.
What is living also doesn't need to have consciousness.
Electromechanical machines such as computers or vehicles are not living because they are mechanically constructed. If we would be constructed either, we could be anyhow sophisticated we would not be living basically.

 

[Exophase]

Biology is the study of living things. By definition all life is biological. Maybe you meant something like organic life?

 

[moonbogg]

Semantics. You know what I meant, and it wasn't any of this. You don't get to redefine common terminology.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/naturally+occurring



It is far more likely for organic molecules to form and fuse into lifeforms without sentient intervention than it is for inorganic molecules to form and fuse into transistor radios without sentient intervention.

I concede your point, but do you get mine? People say that people are outside of the natural process and things we create aren't naturally occurring. I strongly disagree.
Imagine watching the universe from the outside, and you aren't human and have no experience observing life forms like humans. It starts out after the big bang and there's a bunch of dust and radiation and whatever. Lets say you forget about it for a while, come back later and you find radios, cars, strange buildings that seem to grow straight up from the ground, and you find these little squishy things standing upright and they had something to do with these other things evolving. Wouldn't you call all of that naturally occurring? I would. What else could you call it? You didn't reach inside the universe and make those things, they happened on their own. They are naturally occurring. Human's doing something have no impact on what is natural. Its all from dust and energy doing stuff, naturally.

 

[Paul98]

So some scientists state that although life is rare, there are a lot of planets and the universe is so vast, that is to say very large in size, that even rare events such as life may not be so rare after all.

It's like the lottery. one attempt and a win would be very unlikely (though still not impossible). Many attempts and the chances become more likely.

Similarly, we have it seems won the lottery of life on Earth.

But why not a watch? Or an internal combustion engine? Why not a naturally occurring transistor? Just biological life? Isn't that just a bit odd?

Why has no radio transmitter been accidentally created on a planet within reception of EM waves distance from Earth for example?

Why is it only biological life has accidentally occurred, and in so many different forms here on Earth?

Are you wondering why there aren't naturally occurring watches like the human made ones that you wear on your wrist? Or an engine like one that is in your car? It should be obvious why we don't see those in nature

But we do see these sort of things in nature, You have time keepers like the rotation of the earth, movement of earth around the sun,... power generation like the sun, steam powered things like seen in yellowstone. Magnetic fields like generated in the earth,....

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Biology is the study of living things. By definition all life is biological. Maybe you meant something like organic life?

Why just geometrical trapezoids? Tell me that, smart guy!

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Something with potential. Yay!

I have questions beginning with why are you right and he wrong? Then in unambiguous terms what constitutes the Universe? Then the same for physical laws. Semanitcs do count after all.

Note I am not disagreeing, or agreeing for that matter. For intellectual purposes I've discarded my own notions. I'm curious about your reasoning process.

Reality simply is. The universe does what it does, period. In some of the things it does, we recognize patterns. We abstract those patterns from our observations of the universe doing what it does, and we call the collection of those abstractions the "laws of physics."

In this way, we have molded our abstracted "laws of physics" to match as closely as we can to our observations of the regularities and patterns in the universe. We are the mud puddle conforming to the hole in which we lie.

The converse, which was claimed by the OP, suggests that there might be some kind of cosmic "physics police" out there keeping the universe from getting out of hand and violating our "laws of physics." It suggests that the rules are "more real" than that which is allegedly ruled. It confuses the ideas and thoughts we have about the universe with things that actually exist in external reality.

 

[IronWing]

Biological life on earth is a product of carbon chemistry. Carbon, with its four bonding sites, can do all sorts of interesting stuff chemically, particularly neat polymerization reactions useful for building really big molecules. Silicon also has the four bonding sites and the capacity to polymerize and build really big molecules and is really the only possible substitute for carbon as a building block for life. What sets carbon apart is that carbon can undergo lots of reactions over very narrow temperature, eh/pH, and pressure ranges. For silicon, the same range of reactions requires a vast range of temperatures and pressures. This makes silicon based life all but impossible as finding a just so environment of wildly fluctuating, yet reproducible, temperatures and pressures is all but impossible.

 

[irishScott]

I concede your point, but do you get mine? People say that people are outside of the natural process and things we create aren't naturally occurring. I strongly disagree.
Imagine watching the universe from the outside, and you aren't human and have no experience observing life forms like humans. It starts out after the big bang and there's a bunch of dust and radiation and whatever. Lets say you forget about it for a while, come back later and you find radios, cars, strange buildings that seem to grow straight up from the ground, and you find these little squishy things standing upright and they had something to do with these other things evolving. Wouldn't you call all of that naturally occurring? I would. What else could you call it? You didn't reach inside the universe and make those things, they happened on their own. They are naturally occurring. Human's doing something have no impact on what is natural. Its all from dust and energy doing stuff, naturally.

Well sure, it's just that most people operate from a human perspective. Hell technically you're attempting to empathize with an outside perspective through a human perspective. Everything we do, every thought we have is through the lens of the human perspective, so that's the only lens through which we can form concrete judgements.

 

[yhelothar]

There are many complex "machines" on the universe. Atoms themselves are incredibly complex machines that take many components of interactions. A galaxy, even much so.
It's just that they're not directly useful to us like a combustion engine or a watch.

 

[disappoint]

Biological life on earth is a product of carbon chemistry. Carbon, with its four bonding sites, can do all sorts of interesting stuff chemically, particularly neat polymerization reactions useful for building really big molecules. Silicon also has the four bonding sites and the capacity to polymerize and build really big molecules and is really the only possible substitute for carbon as a building block for life. What sets carbon apart is that carbon can undergo lots of reactions over very narrow temperature, eh/pH, and pressure ranges. For silicon, the same range of reactions requires a vast range of temperatures and pressures. This makes silicon based life all but impossible as finding a just so environment of wildly fluctuating, yet reproducible, temperatures and pressures is all but impossible.

Thank you. This is the answer I was looking for.

 

[moonbogg]

Well sure, it's just that most people operate from a human perspective. Hell technically you're attempting to empathize with an outside perspective through a human perspective. Everything we do, every thought we have is through the lens of the human perspective, so that's the only lens through which we can form concrete judgements.

I like doing that from time to time. I try to ditch my human perspective the best I can, but of course I can't entirely because i'm human. I find it to be an interesting way to gain a different perspective.

 

[alkemyst]

Biological life on earth is a product of carbon chemistry. Carbon, with its four bonding sites, can do all sorts of interesting stuff chemically, particularly neat polymerization reactions useful for building really big molecules. Silicon also has the four bonding sites and the capacity to polymerize and build really big molecules and is really the only possible substitute for carbon as a building block for life. What sets carbon apart is that carbon can undergo lots of reactions over very narrow temperature, eh/pH, and pressure ranges. For silicon, the same range of reactions requires a vast range of temperatures and pressures. This makes silicon based life all but impossible as finding a just so environment of wildly fluctuating, yet reproducible, temperatures and pressures is all but impossible.

And along the same properties in the Periodic Table comes Silicon which is why Sci-Fi mentions it a lot. It will work like Carbon, but at a higher energy level more or less.

 

[AViking]

Sagan mentioned Germanium as well.