The Definition Of Life Farnsworth Analysis

How does one decipher between living and non-living? In the article, The Definition of life, Professor Farnsworth argues that life is essentially indefinable. He refers to biological life as a continuum. Throughout the duration of the article, Farnsworth explains how in biology, life cannot be dwindled down to yes or no answers. Rather, he quotes, "nature can trick us with questions that have hidden false assumptions" implying that what one defines as "death" is purely subjective. Farnsworth 's goal is to prove to his students that by standard definitions, a motorcycle and a human are both living. Specifically, Farnsworth argues that technically, all living things can respire, consume energy, respond to stimuli, evolve, think, repair itself, grow, reproduce and are made out of cells. Yet, these things do not necessarily equate to life or death. Farnsworth explains that in his high school biology class he was taught how to separate living and non-living things. First, he says that a living thing respires, meaning that it uses oxygen. But the use of oxygen for function is not exclusive to only "living " organisms. He explains that his bike also requires oxygen which is then burnt up in the cylinders. This is true, because oxygen plays a similar role in the bike as it does in the human body metabolizing food. I agree with this statement because oxygen is a crucial gas for many different functions on earth. Therefore, life cannot be defined by its need for oxygen. Also respiration in a broader sense, refers to the act of breathing, which entails being exposed to oxygen. There are many things that require the presence of oxygen that are not living. Secondly, Farnsworth argues that living things take energy from the environment. Living things do not produce energy themselves. For example, green plants obtain energy through photosynthesis to capture energy through sunlight. Although plants are autotrophs, without the help of the sun and other external factors, they could not survive. That being said, a organism 's ability to obtain energy is not a determining factor for life because a car also requires energy (gas) to function, yet a car is not considered a categorically "living" thing. Therefore, everything requires energy to function. Although simply "taking energy" is not unique to living organisms, taking energy and transforming it for reproduction and growth is. So while a car may require gas to run properly, a plant requires energy to run properly and continue growing. Also, the definition for "energy" encompasses a wide variety of things. While fuel for humans includes food, fuel for a truck is diesel and so forth. Therefore, if energy was considered to be the defining factor for a living creature, than by definition, a blow-dryer could be considered living since it requires electricity to operate. Furthermore proving that life is technically indefinable, is the concept that living things respond to stimuli. Stimuli can be internal or external. Its main purpose is to help organisms maintain a certain balance. In humans, an example of stimuli is homeostasis. Homeostasis allows humans to regulate their internal temperature regardless of external factors. It is the body 's natural reaction to external circumstances. Stimuli is anything that causes an organism to react. So theoretically, everything on earth has a stimuli. In the article, Farnsworth used the example of twisting the throttle on his bike. The bike responds to the throttle, therefore proving that it has a stimuli. I agree with Farnsworth because the purpose of a stimuli is to simply cause something to react, and while many reactions are critical within organisms, it is not the only distinguishable quality for them. Reactions are prevalent throughout all aspects of life. It is natural to react accordingly in certain circumstances, so obviously a stimuli is not exclusive to living things only. One of Farnsworth …show more content…
Within living things, exists DNA, which stores information and genetic coding. These genes are hereditary and therefore passed down through generations. Although this is incomparable to a bike, it can be compared to complex machinery such as computers. Computers are built of extremely complex coding which determines how the computer functions. Similarly to DNA, a slight error in this coding results in a mutation and can potentially be problematic. Therefore, even something as specific as genetic coding, cannot be exclusive to