Chris - Liz - Bruno Nov.6: * Are we organisms; or ecosystems? * Who cares? those are WORDS without proper meaning. OF COURSE WE ARE complexities (without knowing what they are indeed) and we follow the partial list of information we so far received. Try to figure it as "nations" (countries?) in the UN with diverse goals and capabilities, interests and tasks etc. All behave in unison, - seemingly - but every one according to a special role. Our diversity is much greater and we really know very very little about it. That is our biology. Some add to it the 'constitution' (consciousness?) and call something a MInd. Our potential comparison is weak. We are impressed by the temporary explanations - conventional science finds for phenomena that appears to show up. Figments. The only thing we know for sure is that we do not know the vast body of the 'rest'. We learn daily and have no clue WHAT and HOW MUCH there is to come later on (if we indeed CAN get it all).
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 4:06 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > > On 06 Nov 2013, at 07:14, Chris de Morsella wrote: > > > A human has something like ten times as many bacteria in its body than it > does cells with human DNA. Pretty much all life forms are in fact complex > multi-species ecosystems that by and large have evolved to work together in > ways we hardly understand. To give some perspective I’ve read there are > something like fifty species of microorganisms that specialize just on the > highly specialized niche of living on human tooth enamel. That’s just our > teeth! We haven’t even gotten to the gum lines (which are a veritable > jungle thriving with microbial life) and the gut, which is microbial > central. We are sieves and the world flows through our bodies; we are > walking, talking ecosystems…. And so is every other living thing, that we > can see. Even bacteria have bacteriophages. > Even within a single cell; mitochondria carry their own DNA and it could > be argued the modern cell is the fruit of an ancient union of previously > different life forms in the distant origins of emergent life. > > > Most cells organels are ancient bacteria, apparently. Some think that the > nucleus might be an ancient virus. > > Are we organisms; or ecosystems? > > > Our bodies are both, I would say. But we are not our bodies, we are our > values, ideas, memories, etc. That runs through a complex colony of > bacteria, microbes, and modern cells, which are quite plausibly the result > of ancient bacteria and viruses associations. I think. > > Bruno > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
