Why is fire not alive?

[DeadMG]

It doesn't have mass. Think about it. It's simply pure thermal energy, manifested in a chemical reaction.

Edit: Actually, I guess a being of energy could be alive...

How about this: It has to be created by some external influence.

So when strike a match and create fire the external influence surely would be me.

Anyway my input is lack of a nucleus in it makes it not alive.

E = MC^2. Therefore, thermal energy does infact have mass. I see no reason that fire would not be considered alive.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Fire does not respirate, aerobically nor anaerobically. In order to resperate you need water, and if you try to get fire to undergo osmosis, you'd have a hard time keeping it "alive".

In order to resperate you need oxygen. Fire consumes oxygen

You also proved yourself wrong right off the bat "...nor DNA..." DNA is the building block of life. Without it, life can not exist. Find me something that is proven to be alive that doesn't require DNA (oh and viruses aren't alive for those of you who thought it was).

Also, viruses are alive.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-viruses-alive

Fire also doesn't reproduce, it simply grows.

Put a stick in a fire. It will catch on fire. That is rapid asexual reproduction.

In response to your "consciousness" argument. An ameba may not have consciousness but it still has instinct, which is programmed into its DNA. Life needs instinct to exist, and needs DNA in order to have instinct, therefore fire isn't alive.

Hah. What instincts does an ameba have? Eat and reproduce asexually. Fire does that too.

Only matter has the possibility of being alive, and fire is not matter. Sure you may be able to bullshit the mass thing, but the fact of the matter is that if it isn't matter, it can't be alive (no pun intended). Sure fire produces matter (plasma) but it isn't matter, therefore it can't be alive.

Hahaha. Everything is made up of matter. Fire is a collection of gasses.

Carbohydrates, nucleic acids, protein, and lipids are the four main necessities of life (no water isn't, since you can theoretically live off of the water you create as a byproduct of respiration see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_rat), and since fire can exist without any of these things. It can't be alive.

What about plants?

 

[Emperor Inferno]

First:

Fire indeed does evolve, as more and more discoveries are made into chemistry and more substances are made that are more/less flammable, over time, fire has changed, and thus, evolved.

Second:

Fire is almost entirely dependant on conditions including amount of fuel, type of fuel, humidity in the air, density of the air, wind speed/direction, and so on and so forth.

Also, fire meets at least three of the things that science defines as being necessary to be considered life: It eats, it grows, it reproduces. It also dies. Little do some people know it, the phrase "dies out" or "dies down" is very appropriate.

I disagree.

1) First: The fire hasn't actually evolved, we've just discovered more about it, the nature of the fire hasn't changed because we've created different types of fuel for it. It can be made hotter or faster, by external influence. It does not change it's nature in order to survive.

2) Second: Dependant on does not equal sensitive to. Water staying in it's liquid form is dependent on temperature. The same with every metal element, for example.

Fire doesn't react either - if you approach it with water, it doesn't move away. It doesn't sense it's approach. It doesn't perceive or do anything about that danger.

3) Either a fire grows OR reproduces. You can't have both for the same situation. If a fire spreads, is that growth or reproduction? How do you know that an extinguished fire has died or is merely the end of a chemical reaction?

Homeostasis - Fire does not regulate it's temperature/internal environment in order to survive.

Organisation - Fire is not composed of organised cells, which are the basic components of life.

Metabolism - Fire can be said to consume and excrete, but not using organic components.

Growth - Debatable, but can be said to grow.

Adaptation - Fire does not adapt according to different surroundings. It can be made to change by introducing different elements, but fire cannot adapt or change itself.

Response to Stimuli - No. Fire does not react to approaching danger, all that can happen is that the chemical reaction is altered by an external force. The fire itself cannot respond, only be altered.

Reproduction - As above, either fire reproduces when it spreads, or it grows. The fact that two fires can merge into one suggests that reproduction has not taken place.

Broloth has come up with the best explanation so far.

1) A good point, I spoke of fire evolving as a certain perspective, like Obi-wan talking to Luke about the truth.

2) True, dependant on does not necessarily equal sensitive to, but in this case it does. What I meant by saying that is that a fire changes based on shifts in condition: in drier air, it surges with strength and spreads more easily; in high winds, it spreads more rapidly and consumes fuel quicker; with certain fuels, it burns better, and so on.

3) Fire both grows and reproduces. In some instances, the fire simply gets larger, this is growth. In other instances, fire can sometimes beget other separate fires, this is reproduction. I have seen fire "spread" to another object without touching, thus creating a separate fire, thus reproducing, like an animal budding.

 

[DannyBoy451]

I know what your thinking. "Duh, fire isn't alive retard, everyone knows that". No shit sherlock, but why? This is a challenging question, because fire has many of the traits that we associate with living beings. It reproduces, it consumes, it creates waste, it adapts to its environment, and it has diversity. Now, i know it doesn't have cells nor DNA, but open your mind for a second and realize thats how we define LIFE AS WE KNOW IT, meaning that if there was an alien life form with an incorporeal body or didn't have cells, we would have to change our definition, so those answers suck. There is an actual answer to this that makes sense and has no loose ends, given by a nobel peace prize winning bio chemist, but i challenge you to see what you come up with. Cheers.

Wrong on the mass front. We as humans are nothing but a large reservoir of chemical reactions guys, think harder. Consciousness does not count either, do you honestly think an amoeba is conscious? A life form does not need mass to be alive. JUST LIFE AS WE KNOW IT. External influence is also wrong, since we too are created by external influence. Think harder. If you think your smarter than a nobel winning bio chemist, thats very cute, but your still wrong.

Hint; it has to do with entropy

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. Only a few posts down. Don't let that stop you from trying yourself

This is the kind of thing that pretentious wannabe-philosophers get throbbing erections about.

It's also retarded.

 

[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.

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.

I take it you understand what I meant, though for others who maybe didn't I just thew something together in paint to illustrate:

Bear with me, it ain't pretty, it's just to make a point.
Also this was first told to me by discovery channel. okay so their word may not be law but still, they're credible enough.

they said the only, or at least most probable reason was that light actually has mass, it's just so small that we have no means of actually measuring it. for all normal applications it's got no mass, because it's so small we might as well neglect it's existence.
I hope I made some form of sense.

 

[Jursa]

Well fire for one doesn't really reproduce. It spreads using anything in it's path as a something to burn. Your body does the exact same function of turning carbohydrates into CO2, H2O and heat, but that isn't why we are considered to be alive. Of course without that function we would be dead just like if you took many other functions of our body. Besides it would be pretty weird if pyromaniacs should be worshiped instead of thrown in jail for creating something living...

 

[iain62a]

Fire is simply the reaction of oxygen with another substance, for example

C + 02 -> C02
(the reaction of oxygen and carbon, like coal burning)
Your problem is that you're defining life philosophically, and not scientifically.
By your argument you could say that the reaction of hydrochloric acid with calcium carbonate is life. It's not, it's a chemical reaction.

Also, how do I make subscripts?

 

[I_LIKE_CAKE]

Because it is most analogous to a virus, which are not classified as being alive. Fire consumes fuel and cannot exist without an immediate supply, a host if you will. Lacking the ability to store energy and sustain itself without a host, it cannot be classified as living.

 

[Lukeje]

Also, how do I make subscripts?

You don't (despite being able to make superscripts with [sup][/sup] tags). The closest you can get is using 'small' tags, [small][/small] so that you get CO[small]2[/small].

 

[Xanadu84]

1. it doesn't evolve
2. it isn't reactive to conditions
and
3. it isn't an entity, it's a process, so you might just as well say that your computer was alive, or that the ocean is alive because it has waves.

Exactly

1)You don't evolve. I don't evolve. Evolution is not something you do, it's the state of the entire species over time. You can't judge an organism based on its generations. For example, if every other human on earth dies, I would still be alive, yet the human race would be completely unable to evolve. Other examples of beings that don't evolve but are alive are drone bees, and sterile people.
2) A fire goes out when its wet, grows when more food is added, dies when it has no oxygen...that's pretty reactive.
3) What parts of life cannot be considered a process? Without a process you have inert, lifeless matter.

The issue is that we all have the same associations of life tied together in one giant complex set of schema, but it's so fundamental to, err, life, that we can't untie out associations and hammer it out into a definition. Basically any definition of life you could come up with, I could come up with some obscure thought experiment where you would think of the entity as alive, but the definition would say its not (or vice versa). I think this is the wrong way to look at things. A definition for life is either impossible or impractical, and it is more helpful to have a set of attributes that makes objects life-like, and say an object is alive when it has enough of these attributes to satisfy you. Fire happens to be on a intriguing threshold, and mimics enough life like states to throw us all for a lop. Step one, I believe, is to separate, "Conscious" and "Alive" as separate things.

 

[Airhead]

Fire elementals are alive enough for me. They got, like, heads, hands, mouths and whatnot. I don`t know if they sexually reproduce, but it would sure make for the kinkiest porn on the planet if they did.

 

[Anarchemitis]

It doesn't have mass. Think about it. It's simply pure thermal energy, manifested in a chemical reaction.

Edit: Actually, I guess a being of energy could be alive...

How about this: It has to be created by some external influence.

Thereby it has mass in the amount of mass electrons has. Which is negligible. It has mass, just almost too little to be measured, so many people misgeneralize that it doesn't.
____________________________________________________________________________________
I've never thought of fire being alive, but by that train of thinking, it could be. Although it doesn't think, so it isn't alive.

 

[Dessembrae]

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..

This is incorrect in many ways.
1:Fire is not energy. It is the oxidation of combustible materials witch produces light, heat (energy), and various other reaction products ,like CO2 or H2O(on a side not the reason water doesn't burn is because it already has.) depending on the materials involved in the oxidation. These substances consists of atoms and molecules and can thus be described as matter (and therefor it also has mass.)
the "fire" itself is usually just hot gas and not plasma since most substances created during a normal fire would require far higher temperatures to reach the forth state.

2:Had fire(and by fire i mean the flames and the radiant heat) been made ENTIRELY from energy. It could only have been created from the total annihilation of the materials involved in the combustion, something not even done by an H-bomb(it only fusions some material to increase the output of the fission reaction, witch does not annihilate particles only splits atoms into lighter atoms.)

 

[Trivun]

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..

This is incorrect in many ways.
1:Fire is not energy. It is the oxidation of combustible materials witch produces light, heat (energy), and various other reaction products ,like CO2 or H2O(on a side not the reason water doesn't burn is because it already has.) depending on the materials involved in the oxidation. These substances consists of atoms and molecules and can thus be described as matter (and therefor it also has mass.)
the "fire" itself is usually just hot gas and not plasma since most substances created during a normal fire would require far higher temperatures to reach the forth state.

2:Had fire(and by fire i mean the flames and the radiant heat) been made ENTIRELY from energy. It could only have been created from the total annihilation of the materials involved in the combustion, something not even done by an H-bomb(it only fusions some material to increase the output of the fission reaction, witch does not annihilate particles only splits atoms into lighter atoms.)

OK then, fair enough. Can't argue there. However, I have a big ego so I want to get the last word in...

Basically I'm just going to elaborate for the benefit of people who don't understand this argument what happens when particles annihilate. Matter and anti-matter come into contact and because they are completely opposite, they counter each other and are converted into pure energy. Enough that about a gram of antimatter coming into contact with matter will be enough to destroy an area (completely obliterate it) about half a mile to a full mile in width (surprisingly, Dan Brown did his research right...). I studied Physics A-Level and we did some study on energy and antimatter.

 

[papercoin]

You guys are stupid. Fire IS alive. God, don't you know ANYTHING???

 

[SnowCold]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions

Because Wikipedia says so.

Hail! Hail!

 

[papercoin]

It doesn't have sentience, i.e it can't pursue resources, it just spreads along all available routes.

Mold is alive and it does that.

It reacts to light in a way that could be deemed sentience - notice you never see mold on the other side of the trees.

You have no idea how paranoid I am right now, also water could be deemed sentient, oh holy crap now its not just animals and humans that are out to get me, now life itself seeks my demise, I'm going to hide in a cave

There's mold in caves.

OH FUCK

 

[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.

Twins can either be made up of two twins, (or in the case I referred to) be one egg that split and grew into two beings. The reason you can't use the same argument is because fire doesn't have DNA. I was just preemptively correcting a possible mistake. Go ahead and post your argument about how two separate fires are genetically the same, and I'll thwart your argument by saying "fire has no genes". I didn't "just" tell you to ignore the logical argument, I said "SINCE fire has no genetics, THAN you can't claim the same argument. I stated a very firm reason as to why you can't use the argument.

OK lets ignore that i just hate people who use pre emptive arguements because now that i think about it, why is that relevent in the slightist to this discussion?

 

[Danny Ocean]

1. it doesn't evolve
2. it isn't reactive to conditions
and
3. it isn't an entity, it's a process, so you might just as well say that your computer was alive, or that the ocean is alive because it has waves.

Exactly

Both these are so obviously untrue, that reading them almost made me bust out laughing.

First:

Fire indeed does evolve, as more and more discoveries are made into chemistry and more substances are made that are more/less flammable, over time, fire has changed, and thus, evolved.

No. Fire has never changed. This is just so simple I can't believe you used it as a point of argument. You think fires burnt differently 3 million years ago?
No. This quote doesn't even make sense. It seems you're confusing stuff that burns with fire. Or possibly you're saying that our definition of Fire has evolved, which it hasn't. It's still the orange/red/blue/purple/green/white luminous stuff that rises off of very hot objects.

Ugh.

However, This I agree with.

Second:

Fire is almost entirely dependant on conditions including amount of fuel, type of fuel, humidity in the air, density of the air, wind speed/direction, and so on and so forth.

Also, fire meets at least three of the things that science defines as being necessary to be considered life: It eats yup, it growsyup, it reproduces.I hate this. Through one logic path you can say it does, but then through many others you can say it doesn't.

You could go for some kind of entropy-based explanation. Fire lacks organization. Life as we think of it is associated with a decrease in local entropy (we "balance the books", so to speak, by increasing entropy around us, e.g. through our waste heat). Fire just kinda increases entropy instead.

Perhaps you could also go for some kind of information-based explanation. That's pretty close to the one above, since information involves organization and vice versa.

-- Alex

WE HAVE A WINNER! CONGRADULATIONS. your smarter than all those other dudes.

You should wipe your nose, it looks a little brown.
What suddenly made you the decider of what is correct and what isn't, hm?
I'll Hazard a guess that you didn't even come up with this "correct" answer yourself, but just read another person's idea and thought, "Hey, that sounds good!"
Save you condescending remarks for a group of people less "Adept" (Hah!) than yourself, because they are the only ones who won't see right through you.

In the end though, this is a completely ambiguous, subjective, and hence pointless argument ever.

 

[Kellerb]

this is an awesome idea for a post, an new look on something we take as granted. good stuff

it does have many traits that we normally associate with life, but it has no mind, no organs
(ps. you don't see chihuahuathrowers do you... well not until i finish the blueprints )