life vs death vs machine

wylo

I dont know if this is the right place but anyway, does anyone ever wonder what makes something alive? or even dead for that matter? What exactly is in a plant or an animal or a human that gives us a limited life that is completely irreversible.

I know its a question that probably cant be answered, but I just find it strange that even though humans are just flesh ,blood, bones, organ, limbs , brain, howcome these things cant be "updated".
Whats happening to us when we die that makes it completely irreversible that doesnt happen to a car or a radio or a clock or any machine where parts can be replaced and the machine can be brought back to life. If you were to give a freshly dead body a new brain, new heart, new kidney etc , it wont come to life.

Even something as advanced as a top notch computer, if you were smash it to bits, with good technology you could reaassemble the whole thing, even the hard drive and have it like new. But once something living dies , its over, it cannot be brought to life.

Joe1919

I think it would be better to compare life to a 'process' rather than to a machine. There are 'processes' such as weather systems, fire, baking a cake, iron blast furnace etc that have similaraties to life. Each is a sort of unique event. The fire starts as a spark (seed) and by using fuel and air take on a sort of life and eventually dies or exausts itself or can be killed prematurely by sprinkling water on it.
The ancients thought that fire had a sort of life as it grows, reproduces, consumes, respires (uses oxygen), excretes (ashes) and responds to its enviorment (sensitive). The fire can be alive or it can die.

Similar arguments can be used for other natural processes such as thunder storms, tornadoes etc. These also have a sort of life.

There are also electronic or mechanical processes. The computer when it hits 'the blue screen of death' or crashes suffers a sort of death as all the internal processes within its operation system and memory get confused and dies and hence needs to be rebooted.
The rebooting process of a computer is a sort of re-birth, the computer processes must be restarted and laid out again in memory. Traces of past processes are contained as magnetic particles in the harddrive.

Always remember that the human being is really only a subset of part of a bigger process which contains all of the cosmos (life and matter). Consciousness is a process. The death of an individual is not the end of the process of life. The greater process of life continues. The individual is only one instance of that process.

There is a branch of philosophy called process philosophy that can be useful here.
Thinking in terms of dynamic processes rather than in static 'machine' terms can be useful. Its the work or the dynamic changing 'process' that can count rather than thinking in terms of static material.

Remember that the human body continously changes the matter and material that it is composed of as it goes through life. Only our 'form' or pattern remains (generally) the same (i.e. The cells rejuvinate). You are materially a different person than you were a number of years ago. We are different to machines in this respect. Our life to some extent follows a pre-determined process (in terms of growth and decay) and we are genetically programmed to die at a certain age if bad health or an accident doesent get us before this.

Certain irreversable events take place at death. Our bodies no longer respire and the lack of oxygen to the brain cause the brain to lose consciousness and memory. Cells deteriate rapidly.
This is quite similar to what happens to certain computer programmes if the power plug is pulled and there is nothing saved or backed up. Information and memory is lost.
Another similaraty is with wine or beer making, which is an organic process. If the temperature drops during the fermentation process, the yeast can 'go off' or die.

mysterious

Life and death is only a matter of evolement.


One way to know this is look at how the universe level. How things are created and soon destroyed.


What happens to the light?
What happens when darkness fall?


The truth is, you never stopped, you just changed to something more and something different. Your expressing yourself different as every moment. Your soul is travelling the journey of this great expansion plane.


At distance spun
A time ran


You will come to one point, To complete. You will come to a new point and be a journey of something else.


The universe is infinite

ChocolateSauce

wylo wrote: »

I dont know if this is the right place but anyway, does anyone ever wonder what makes something alive? or even dead for that matter? What exactly is in a plant or an animal or a human that gives us a limited life that is completely irreversible.

I know its a question that probably cant be answered, but I just find it strange that even though humans are just flesh ,blood, bones, organ, limbs , brain, howcome these things cant be "updated".
Whats happening to us when we die that makes it completely irreversible that doesnt happen to a car or a radio or a clock or any machine where parts can be replaced and the machine can be brought back to life. If you were to give a freshly dead body a new brain, new heart, new kidney etc , it wont come to life.

Even something as advanced as a top notch computer, if you were smash it to bits, with good technology you could reaassemble the whole thing, even the hard drive and have it like new. But once something living dies , its over, it cannot be brought to life.

I would say that we don't know how to work that spark ourselves (yet?), not that it is impossible. If you accept that there is nothing supernatural about humans, which I do, you must also accept that there is nothing which literally makes it impossible to control life and death.