Why is fire not alive?

[Whiskyjakk]

Fire obviously isn't alive because nobody has formed a society to protect it. As a definition of what it is to be alive I think this is superior to all of the conventional explanations. For example; animals are alive and they have the RSPCA, human children are alive and they have the NSPCC, cows have Hindus, insects have Jainists. Fire doesn't have a society or religion to protect it therefore it isn't alive.

... that outside the box enough for you?

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Because it's a chemical reaction?

So is life.

Well, since we've got all this lovely DNA and breeding going on, because it's an uncontrolled chemical reaction?

 

[asiepshtain]

If you don't want to stress your brain, Alex nailed it pretty good on page 2, he knows how to think outside the box.

Really? That's not what I felt like I was doing. Entropy is a pretty commonly-used scientific concept (though also one that's kinda ugly to actually use); I just plucked it out of the "science" toolbox. No great insight or innovation there. Talking about the universe in terms of entropy, information density, &c. is something I specifically learned, not something I invented.

This is far closer to "outside the box" than the response you expected:
Why do you care about defining "life" in specific and absolute terms in the first place? Can you show that some hard-and-fast definition isn't going to be about as arbitrary and restrictive as the definitions you complained about in the initial post? What value is there in being able to say "fire is alive" or "fire is not alive"?

-- Alex

Hmm, while it can be said that fire does increase entropy. The centralized process of the flame can be thought of as a lower entropy situation with a very short life span, i.e. a flame is a alive.

edit: and if reverse entropy equals life, then crystals are defnitly alive and so is gravity

 

[Koko56]

OP - did not read the OP, but did read some of the replies.

Well, okay, now I did read it...

Get off that shit.

 

[Corpse XxX]

This is just like, why doesn't water catch on fire?

Its made of hydrogen and oksygen, and should therefor burn like crazy..

Why doesn't it?

 

[Ace of Spades]

I can't honestly call something alive if it doesn't have cells.

 

[plautius]

This is something I've debated with more than one person in the past, and while I acknowledge that perhaps I'm a little too attached to a principle of uncertainty and the unknowable, I'd say that the simplest observation is the most accurate:

The original human definition of life is based upon the assumption that life as it developed on Earth must provide some clue as to how all life in the universe develops. Furthermore, it is based on the assumption that all life operates on some common basic principles. This means that our science is biased because of the way in which we exist, which means that any conclusion which does not directly account for that possible bias has a high probability of being flawed. If science is a pursuit of absolute truth, then the only accurate observation is that we don't know anything for sure.

We as a species have apparently been 'in the making' for a limited amount of time. Our entire existence was dictated by the first cell that existed on this planet, unless life here has some extraterrestrial origin - in which case our history is merely longer, not more complex. The point is, all life on Earth exists because of the way in which life began on Earth. This does not permit the assumption that fundamental processes of the universe can't represent a form of 'life', but we operate on the assumption that it does. This is a mistake in our logic.

Fire is one of the fundamental processes of the universe - it can and does occur under specific circumstances, regardless of outside influence. That is not to say that outside influence has no effect on a natural process, only that the existence of such a process is undisturbed by exactly what occurs in our universe. We make more fire than might exist without us, but fire is always the same. For the religious among you, God could be considered THE fundamental process of the universe, and if something without the tangible properties we choose to associate with life is NOT life, then God is not alive. Does God need to be alive to be real? Apply this to any question and the only answer that is universally sound is that all we know is what we believe. As a species we are intelligent enough to conclude that it is unreasonable to define life by only the standards we know and understand, because we have been proven wrong time and time again. We choose to refer to this failure of logic as 'scientific progress', when in fact it is a method of creating new falsehoods which are immediately satisfactory, to be discarded when something more accurate is developed. If you need proof, consider the theory of relativity - we know it is obsolete and now we attempt to salvage what is still valid by assimilating it into more modern theories.

Life as we know it exists to exist. Reproduction is a method of genetic propogation. This ensures our survival as a species, and is reinforced by our drive to survive as individuals. Because each person wants to live, we all fight to the best of our ability to remain alive. The urge to reproduce exists fundamentally in all known organisms. Those who succeed are the best candidates to improve a species genetically. Because of intelligence and technology, the human race has moved away from these basic rules - rules which we invented based on observations of the life of a single planet. I don't think the definition of life is entirely bad, but I do think it fails to extrapolate upon itself. Why would an organism with no need for evolution continue to practice it? What is evolution? What would be the apex? And would we even know if we acheived it?

A basic process of the universe simply exists. It cannot evolve or devolve, it cannot change. It simply always has been and will be for as long as this universe exists. If fire is alive, it cannot die as a species because it can always occur, even if it never happens again in the history of all existence. If every human being dies, it's over. We're finished. Unless a precisely identical organism develops under precisely the same conditions for precisely the same amount of time, repeatedly until the end of time and space, 'the human race' will have a defined and finite period of time in which to exist. I think it's sufficient to say that the most probable scenario involves us dying off entirely with a thousand years or so. End of story. It would be lucky if there's a planet left for everything else by the time we go. We can't assume everything will follow the trend of Earth's 'natural order'.

To address the primary theory here...

The laws of thermodynamics are a popular citation in support of the concept of entropy as a reasoning that fire is not alive. Firstly, the laws of thermodynamics have been broken by natural processes of the universe: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It has been observed that identical groups of matter and antimatter spontaneously generate throughout the universe, and annihilate each other to correct the imbalance of matter and energy in the universe. There are, however, situations where this process would be interfered with. A black hole is a one dimensional point of infinite density. It has sufficient gravitational pull to capture the fastest form of matter in the universe, light. This is not considering theoretical tachyons, which travel faster than light and thus move backwards through time as they move through space. I don't know how such a particle would be affected. As such, when a group of matter and antimatter occurs on the edge of a black hole, one half may occasionally be dragged in while the other escapes. This is an observable possibility, and implies that the laws of thermodynamics are not entirely consistent. They function for our purposes, but like the theory of relativity, they are apparently imperfect representations of the functioning of our universe. The details are unimportant. The fact is that our theories are imperfect and to assume truth based upon them guarantees some inaccuracy.

Secondly, and more importantly, the notion that life represents an entropic balance is questionable. The universe does indeed appear to be geared towards 'entropy', whatever that really is. However, what defines the 'organization' the makes DNA an exception to the rule? If waste heat from organisms composed of DNA nullifies the order of DNA, then we come out even anyway. However, I would argue that the 'organization' of matter into cellular, 'living' structures is no different from the creation of a star. These events occur because they CAN happen. If they can happen, and somewhere in the universe the proper conditions occur, it WILL happen. Stars burn out. Cells die when nourishment is no longer available. Both are conceptually the same, though one is more complex than the other. In the same way that organic life is propogated on our planet, the formation of galaxies and stars and planets and other various celestial bodies is propogated throughout the universe.

I don't think it's neccessary to get too involved in the question of defining sentience. We just don't know whether or not any given thing has thoughts or feelings. We don't even know what defines thought and feeling outside our own minds - all we can know is that we believe certain things that we assume to be truth. That the people around us share our feelings, or that they don't. That life is defined by a few simple rules, or that the universe is more complex than we can really understand. We don't know whether our experience of life is a figment of some greater imagination. We probably aren't the only lifeform in the universe, and we probably aren't the most developed. Whether the universe exists or not is entirely unknowable. Whether the natural processes of the universe are conscious in some recognizeable way can be determined, but consciousness can never be defined. If fire has thoughts, would it dismiss us as a mere 'occurence' of existence? Would we even be able to relate to the way in which some alien organism thinks?

In terms of fire, what this means is that we can only assume that fire could be alive, and leave it at that. We are probably never going to know. If we do, it will make no difference except to satisfy somebody's curiosity. That somebody will be dead within one hundred years, and the universe will continue on for however long its expansion dictates. Fire will always happen precisely the way it always did, and this is the best way for it to exist - it can't end because it has existed from the beginning. Assuming the universe exists. Assuming anybody but me exists. Being 'alive' is a very complicated thing.

 

[improbable]

It doesn't have a self-preservation instinct.
/thread

 

[Metonym]

Well even "cutting edge" science is to nature as a child playing with crayons.
"-Einstein."
BE humble be very fucking humble, a principle of uncertainty is a good starting point.

It´s very possible that we humans only can talk about conceptions and "principles" that are very minute compared to the "real" principles that run the show, I´m not talking about god. But the ones we can talk about (DEF) surely has no problem dealing with the classes of reality that are functional and meaningful for us. If we speak from an ontological view, the biggest "part" of reality will probably consist of massive fields where intelligibility is not an option. Is the concept (meta concept) of life in one of those fields?

 

[Damien the Pigeon]

You guys realize that the answer that he was looking for was said on the top of page 2....
And another correct one was slightly below that.

 

[The_Prophet]

To put it simple - fire is not a material. It's a result of a chemical reaction.


Plus, if fire was living we'd all be screwed.

True, true.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I'll paraphrase my biology textbook (Biology International Edition edition 7), according to that life is:
Orderly, shows evolutionary adaptation, responds to the enviroment, has regulation, processes energy, reproduces and grows and develops.
Wikipedia says this about life:

Conventional definition: The consensus is that life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit all or most of the following phenomena:[9][10]

Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and chemotaxis.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

and

Proposed definitions of life, to reflect the minimum phenomena required:

Living things are systems that tend to respond to changes in their environment, and inside themselves, in such a way as to promote their own continuation.[10]
A network of inferior negative feedbacks (regulatory mechanisms) subordinated to a superior positive feedback (potential of expansion, reproduction).[11]
A characteristic of self-organizing, self-recycling systems consisting of populations of replicators that are capable of mutation, around most of which homeostatic, metabolizing organisms evolve.[citation needed]
Type of organization of matter producing various interacting forms of variable complexity, whose main property is to replicate almost perfectly by using matter and energy available in their environment to which they may adapt. In this definition "almost perfectly" relates to mutations happening during replication of organisms that may have adaptive benefits.[citation needed]
Life is a potentially self-perpetuating open system of linked organic reactions, catalyzed simultaneously and almost isothermally by complex chemicals (enzymes) that are themselves produced by the open system.[citation needed]

Fire doesn't fit in neither of them.

 

[beddo]

I wonder how much fire weighs.

 

[Trivun]

There are at least six things that something has to be able to do to be classified as alive, which all animals, plants and fungi, and bacteria/viruses do. They are:

1. Movement
2. Respiration
3. Nutrition
4. Excretion
5. Reproduction
6. Growth

Fire moves, as energy. It respires because it gives out carbon and water, and it grows as it spreads. However, it does not reproduce in any conventional manner, and does not excrete. However, it is difficult to say whether or not fire consumes any sort of food (nutrition), as it needs to 'feed' on fuel in order to sustain itself. Despite this, fire fails to do at least two of the above, and so cannot be defined as alive.

[/thread]

 

[Skalman]

It doesn't have mass.

Everything has mass.

Just arguably much of it, photons have mass, electrons, neutrons and protons have mass.
The problem is that we'd have a lot of trouble trying to measure it.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

It hardly reproduces. It simply spreads, it doesn't create more offspring via genetics.

 

[Trivun]

It doesn't have mass.

Everything has mass.

Just arguably much of it, photons have mass, electrons, neutrons and protons have mass.
The problem is that we'd have a lot of trouble trying to measure it.

Only matter has mass. Fire is energy, not matter. It could possibly be converted to matter due to the Conservation of Energy Law and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but in it's current state fire is only energy. Therefore it does not have mass. Your own logic is fundamentally flawed by a basic misunderstanding of the laws of Physics.

 

[bad rider]

Fire also doesn't reproduce, it simply grows.

Like asexual reproduction in plant's, nothing new is created it's just the same plant.....

First. Most plants sexually reproduce. In-fact, Mendel studied most of genetics using pea plants. (as in, the differences, asexual beings don't show differences in their offspring.

Yes but not all plants sexually reproduce i can't remember the plant (I was watching some bill oddie style program) but it suggested that something like the japanese knotweed only reproduces asexually and their may only be one plant on the planet.

Second. When a creature asexually reproduces, it creates another being that can either live, or die. You wouldn't look at a star fish, cut off it's arm, have two starfishes, and go "boy, I really don't see two starfish, just one starfish that grew". Killing one starfish wouldn't damage the other starfish the way putting out part of a fire would.

so if a fire split and i put out one of them, how would it damage the other?

In short. Yes, something new IS created, it is just genetically the same. Like twins, you wouldn't have human twins and go "uhp, just one baby, since their genetics are the same nothing new was created."Oh, and since fire has no genetics, you can't even claim the same argument for it.

Why can't I claim the same arguement? Please tell me why, I don't like being told to ignore the logical arguement because you say so. Besides a regular twin is made up of two different eggs, this is more like a siamese twin where you would say they are the same until the point at which they are seperated. But no my point on the asexual reproduction (I didn't word this well) isn't that there is no new plant it's that it is the same plant.

 

[Skalman]

Your own logic is fundamentally flawed by a basic misunderstanding of the laws of Physics.

Probably.

But still, photons are considered energy? correct?
and they've seen that a black hole made the light coming from a far away star change direction. Making the star not visible.
Think throwing a ball in strong side wind, or a metal object falling past a strong magnetic field (not enough to stop, just enough to change direction)

My knowledge of physics is limited however, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Trivun]

Your own logic is fundamentally flawed by a basic misunderstanding of the laws of Physics.

Probably.

But still, photons are considered energy? correct?
and they've seen that a black hole made the light coming from a far away star change direction. Making the star not visible.
Think throwing a ball in strong side wind, or a metal object falling past a strong magnetic field (not enough to stop, just enough to change direction)

My knowledge of physics is limited however, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're right that photons are considered energy. They are the pockets of energy that are given out when electrons perform what is known as a quantum leap within the energy shells of an atom (i.e. they switch to a different energy level). The photon is released to conserve energy. Incidentally, this is how fluorescent lights work. However, they do not have mass. They are basically pure energy, that is given out in the form of light energy. As for the black hole thing, I'm not really sure (I did A-Level Physics but we never covered astronomy).

EDIT: Thinking about it, black holes do make light enegy change direction. There is still no mass, but the gravity of a black hole is so strong that even energy can't escape. Mass has a large effect on gravity, but energy doesn't normally be affected by it, due to a lack of mass. Near a black hole, though, the point of the hole is so dense and has such a large gravitational force centred in one small place that it sort of warps and bends spacetime itself (a theory exists that they may be connected due to this warping effect, creating what are known as 'white holes' which are the opposite to black holes, and that travel between them may be possible through 'wormholes'). Then the laws of physics that we understand in standard reference frames do not necessarily apply.