SO, WHAT IS LIFE?

Yeah, yeah, I know we’ve already talked about WHAT IS LIFE. But I still am not
convinced that we’ve really come to an actual answer. After pondering this question some
more, I am having trouble defining the characteristics that all LIFE has in common.

Lynn Margulis writes, “What is life? Is surely one of the oldest questions. We live.
We—people, birds, flowering plants, even algae glowing in the ocean at night—differ from
steel, rocks, inanimate matter.
“We are alive. But what does it mean to live, to be alive, to be a discrete being at
once part of the universe but separated from it by our skin? What is life?”

So, what is life? More precisely, what FIVE things does ALL LIFE have in common?

1. Find your partner (with the same number) and go to your station. (It’s the
same station as your number.) Follow the directions at your station. THREE
MINUTES PER STATION.

2. In the end: Write 5 CHARACTERISTICS that all life has in

common.

3. WRITE a convincing definition for WHAT LIFE IS.

4. Work quickly and be prepared to DEFEND your DEFINITION OF LIFE to your

classmates who will be working to come up with a more convincing definition.

Take notes on the back and have fun!

DATA
List the characteristics that DATA has in order to be considered alive or not alive.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

PLANT
List the characteristics that a PLANT has in order to be considered alive or not alive.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

VIRUSES
List the characteristics that a VIRUS has in order to be considered alive or not alive.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

ROCKS
List the characteristics that a ROCK has in order to be considered alive or not alive.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

A STERILE HUMAN BEING

List the characteristics that infertile human has in order to be considered alive or not
alive.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
DATA
Directions: Read over the facts on DATA and ANSWER questions on your worksheet.

Data from Star

Trek
Rank: Lieutenant Commander
Current assignment: Second
officer/science officer, U.S.S.
Enterprise, NCC-1701/E
Full Name: Data
Date of birth: Permanently
re-activated Feb. 2, 2338
(initial activation unknown)
Place of birth: Omicron
Theta science colony
Parents: Created by Dr.
Noonien Soong and Dr. Juliana O'Donnell Soong Tainer
Education: Starfleet Academy, 2341-45
Marital status: Single
Children: one, deceased

Psychological Profile: Report of Ship’s Counselor Deanna Troi

“…Data has quite simply wished to be more human and experience as much of that
condition’s depths and shadows as his adaptive programming can approximate—with
experiments in everything from art, acting and poetry to keeping a pet cat Spot and
imitating humanisms ranging from laughter, sneezing and whistling to dance, facial hair
grooming and bedtime routines.

“…Data turned down a chance to be human offered by Q in 2364, quoting Shakespeare’s

“To thine one self be true,” but inched closer to his goal with the discovery of an
“emotion chip” created by his builder...

“…Data carries a concealed master on/off switch centered just below his right shoulder
blade. As designed he is programmed not to lie or deceive, recalls everything he’s ever
been exposed to, cannot use verbal contractions, and has super-human strength,
dexterity, voice duplication, self-diagnostics, and “fully functional” male sexual abilities
without the emotional attraction.”

Source: www.startrek.com/library/individ.asp?ID=112457
PLANTS
Directions: LIST facts you know about PLANTS in the space below and
WRITE the answers to the following questions on your worksheet.
WRITE FACTS HERE:

QUESTIONS:
• List the characteristics that a PLANT has in order to be considered alive or not
alive.
• Does ALL life require the characteristics you listed?
VIRUSES
Directions: Read over the facts on the VIRUS sheet and ANSWER questions on your
worksheet.

Viruses
(including computer viruses)

Fragments of DNA or RNA (not both)

that have become detached from
bacterial genomes and have the ability to
replicate themselves within cells.

Reproduction: reproduce in computers

and in hosts.

Evolution: Can and do evolve and mutate

in computers and in hosts.

Autopoetic: Too small to be autopoetic

(can not self-maintain).

Metabolism: Do not metabolize until they enter the host.

This is a picture of the AIDS virus, which are very small. Nearly 200 would
fit on the period at the end of a sentence.

Source: Raven and Johnson. Biology. Boston, Massachusetts: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
1996.
ROCKS
Directions: Read over the facts on the ROCK and WRITE the answers to the following
questions on your worksheet.

FACTS:
• The rock is “growing” crystals inside. Look closely you’ll see them.
• Rocks erode.
• Rocks are created from earth processes.
• Rocks respire or “breathe” or let off gasses.

QUESTIONS:
• List the characteristics that a ROCK has in order to be considered alive or not
alive.
• Does ALL life require the characteristics you listed?
A sterile/infertile human being
A sterile/infertile human being

Directions: LIST facts you know about sterile human beings in the space below and
WRITE the answers to the following questions on your worksheet.
WRITE FACTS HERE:
Quotes to go with each station

Crystal

Erwin Schrodinger argued that, “Despite our ‘obvious inability’ to define it [life], it would
eventually be accounted for by physics and chemistry. Life is like a crystal—a strange,
“aperiodic crystal”—repeats its structure as it grows.”

What do you think about Schrodinger’s definition? Will you incorporate any of it into
YOUR definition?

Plant

“Life is something edible, lovable, or lethal.”

--James E. Lovelock, inventor

What do you think about Lovelock’s definition? Will you incorporate any of it into YOUR
definition?

Data

“Life is not a thing or a fluid any more than heat is. What we observe are some unusual
sets of objects separated from the rest of the world by certain peculiar properties such
as growth, reproduction, and special ways of handling energy. These objects we elect to
call “living things”.”

--Robert Morrison, physicist

What do you think about Morrison’s definition? Will you incorporate any of it into YOUR
definition?

Rock

“What was life? No one knew. It was undoubtedly aware of itself, so soon as it was life;
but did not know what it was…it was not matter and it was not spirit, but something
between the two, a phenomenon conveyed by matter, like the rainbow on the waterfall,
and like the flame…”

--Thomas Mann, novelist

“Life is bacterial and those organisms that are not bacteria have evolved from organisms
that are.” (Margulis, 89.)

Sterile Human Being

“It is a material process, sifting and surfing over matter like a strange, slow wave. It is a
controlled, artistic chaos, a set of chemical reactions so staggeringly complex that more
than eighty million years ago it produced the mammalian brain that now, in human form,
composes love letters and uses silicon computers to calculate the temperature of matter
at the origin of the universe.”

--Lynn Margulis

Endosymbiosis

“Life is the strange new fruit of individuals evolved by symbiosis.”

—Lynn Margulis

ENDOsymbiosis
VOCAB WORDS! àcoming back to haunt you!!

Mitochondria, found in cells.

Function: they are membrane bound organelles that transform energy stored in food
molecules to ATP.
Fact: They look a lot like bacteria.
Fact: They grow and divide at their own pace within the larger cell.
Fact: Scientists think they may have evolved from a BACTERIUM, but they can no longer
function or survive outside the cell.
Fact: Scientists think they were once FREE LIVING BACTERIA.

You tell the story…