Should We Widen Our Perspective on What Constitutes Life?
Here's a topic that came to mind when
@marduk brought-up Nick Redfern's recent book
The Martians for which he has some seemingly very different perspectives than Redfern. I suspect we'd be much in agreement on most points, and in the end find that seemingly contradictory perspectives on the small scale merge into a more coherent bigger picture.
Moving in this direction it occurred to me that we'd probably agree on virtually every fact about the situation up to some point. One of the first logical points of divergence could be where we advocate differing positions about this question:
QUESTION: Are the very interesting artifacts on Mars that Nick refers to:
- Natural?
- Engineered?
- Alive?
Here we'd have to decide what those words mean. I think we'd probably agree on all of them up to a point. Maybe another question will materialize, like: What if the interesting artifacts on Mars that Nick refers to aren't life in the way we normally think of it, but might come very close or even qualify as life under a different point of view?
Then we'd have to look at an example, and I might pick the artifacts that look like photos of groves of trees taken from some distance above. And that's when things could get really interesting. Let's go along with the position that these artifacts are nothing more than materials native to the planet that have formed according to the rules of nature, into shapes that look surprisingly like trees.
Can we not make the same claims about ourselves? Are we not made out of materials native to our planet? Have these materials not formed themselves according to the rules of nature into shapes surprisingly like humans? Perhaps
some things we might assume to be inanimate, can legitimately be considered life if we widen our perspective?