(HOST) Commentator Edith Hunter has been contemplating what it means to be "alive".
(HUNTER) Recently, my oldest grandson, Matthew, brought over a book he thought I might enjoy, On Growth and Form, by D’Arcy Thompson. I gave it a try, and after reading the first chapter and dipping into several others, gave up. It was over my head.
But in that first chapter I read something that stuck with me. The author was writing about a one-cell form of life, an amoeba. He wrote: "There are actions within living cells taking place which our knowledge does not permit us to ascribe with certainty to any known physical force. … We have no clear guidance as to what is vital."
I remember once, soon after we had brought home a brand new baby, taking one of the older children into the baby’s room one bitterly cold night. We brushed against the iron bedstead on which the baby’s basket was lying. It felt frigid. Then I put my hand inside the babies sleeping bag. The little body was as warm as toast. I put his little brother’s hand in there too.
"Isn’t that amazing," I said. "The iron on the end of the bed is so cold it almost hurts to touch it, but that little tiny baby, is lovely and warm."
There was silence for a moment, and then his brother said, almost in a whisper, "That’s ’cause he’s alive."
What is it in the living object that constitutes that aliveness? Language tends to make a thing out of a quality. If we dissect a living object we not only can’t find the "aliveness", we destroy the quality of being alive in the process.
D’Arcy Thompson went on to say: "The whole assemblage of so-called vital phenomena, or properties of the organism, cannot be clearly classified into those that are physical in origin and those that are sui generis and peculiar to living things."
I recently read, The Great Chain of Life by Joseph Wood Krutch. He was fascinated by the question of how "aliveness" first came upon the scene. A chemical reaction must have taken place that introduced "aliveness" but Krutch raised the question: Did this chemical reaction take place only once? Why doesn’t it happen over and over? Why isn’t aliveness popping up all the time from the nonliving world?
E. O. Wilson, the world famous biologist, writes: "Our most sophisticated simulations of life processes still fall short of the real thing. We cannot yet create an artificial organism at even the lowest level." End of quote.
We cannot create life out of non-life – yet.
Writer and historian Edith Hunter lives in Weathersfield Center.