Posted: May 16, 2012 4:24 am
CharlieM wrote:Spearthrower wrote:CharlieM wrote:
Yes life can be viewed as a coordinated, symbiotic development. Seeing life as a struggle for existence is a narrow point of view that doesn't see the bigger picture.
A forest isn't a coordinated, symbiotic development - it's a vicious struggle for survival. Comforting notions do not intrinsically equate to reality.
You're making my point for me. For a start 'vicious' is not an adjective I would use in connection with the plant life of a
forest.
Precisely why you are mistaken - you are conceiving of things from the human perspective. Just because trees move slowly, doesn't mean that they're not cutthroat.
CharlieM wrote:I wouldn't even use it for the animals.
Haven't spent much time in the natural world then, have you?
CharlieM wrote: I would say that vice as a human failing and doesn't apply to the individuals of any other species.
That's some kind of mystical thinking, possibly connected to a religious narrative rather than drawn from observations of nature. Humans are far less vicious than the majority of animal species - we don't eat each others babies, attack on site, or murder in gangs very often. We're a very gentle social species for the most part - I'd guess you're putting an additional value on mindfulness - knowing that one is doing the act. That very element of knowing what is right and wrong for our society is the thing that keeps the majority of us in line.
CharlieM wrote: And why do you think that coordinated, symbiotic development is a comforting notion? The successful survival of wildebeest as a species involves the pain and suffering of individual animals. The coordinated death of countless bone cells go into the making of a vertebrate's skeleton.
Because it makes you believe its operating to a plan?
CharlieM wrote:Forests are regarded as ecosystems which sustain themselves despite and because of the fact that within the system individual organisms live and die. The ecosystem couldn't be sustained without the death of individual organisms.
There's a constant war for resources - it's a bit like if there was a limited amount of oxygen, so we strangled our neighbours to ensure our own survival.
CharlieM wrote:And to bring this back on topic an average individual human cell is a community of molecules working together to ensure the coordinated function of the whole. Calculations indicate that each human cell contains roughly a billion protein molecules. This needs incredible organization.
Yes, a body is a community of molecules - but they don't all work together, even detrimental rogue genes make a perfectly good living.
And yes, 'incredible organisation' like hydrogen and oxygen combining.
CharlieM wrote:Molecular Motors in Cells Work Together, Study Shows
February 13, 2009 — Even within cells, the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
Molecular motors, the little engines that power cell mobility and the ability of cells to transport internal cargo, work together and in close coordination, according to a new finding by researchers at the University of Virginia. The work could have implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders.
"We found that molecular motors operate in an amazingly coordinated manner when moving an algal cell one way or the other,"
said Jeneva Laib, the lead author and an undergraduate biomedical engineering student at the University of Virginia. "This provides a new understanding of the ways cells move."Scientists Discover How Molecular Motors Go Into "Energy Save Mode"
PITTSBURGH—The transport system inside living cells is a well-oiled machine with tiny protein motors hauling chromosomes,
neurotransmitters and other vital cargo around the cell. These molecular motors are responsible for a variety of critical transport jobs, but they are not always on the go. They can put themselves into “energy save mode” to conserve cellular fuel and, as a consequence, control what gets moved around the cell, and when.
Yes, but what's the point of sharing all this? Humans use metaphors to pass ideas between each other. A cell is not a machine, but a good way of communicating this so that others who have not witnessed it first hand, is to use a mechanism we know that mimics this: a machine. You can glean this with the 'energy saving mode' - clearly an analogy to promulgate a general understanding.