FIRE
It moves, it feeds on oxygen, but it doesn't think or know where it is moving. So.....???
That's a great question because fire does have some things in common with living things. It needs fuel and oxygen. It can grow. It "reproduces" to make more fires.
But fire is also different from living things. For one thing, it is not made of cells. All living things are made of cells.
Also, when fire "reproduces," no information is passed on. In living things, DNA carries information from one generation to another. All living things are adapted to where and how they live by evolution, which changes DNA over time. Fire is basically the same every time. It may be bigger or smaller, hotter or less hot, or moving differently, but that's all because of the conditions right now, not because of information it inherited in DNA.
Another difference is that all living things come from other living things. One-celled living things divide to make two new one-celled things. Eggs, spores, seeds, babies, and growing new individuals from parts of their "parents" are all ways to reproduce new life from live things. Fire can come from a match, rubbing sticks together, a spark, or other things that are not fire.
So fire is a great example of something that has some characteristics of life. Thinking about ideas like these helps us to really figure out what we mean by life.
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=360
That's a great question because fire does have some things in common with living things. It needs fuel and oxygen. It can grow. It "reproduces" to make more fires.
But fire is also different from living things. For one thing, it is not made of cells. All living things are made of cells.
Also, when fire "reproduces," no information is passed on. In living things, DNA carries information from one generation to another. All living things are adapted to where and how they live by evolution, which changes DNA over time. Fire is basically the same every time. It may be bigger or smaller, hotter or less hot, or moving differently, but that's all because of the conditions right now, not because of information it inherited in DNA.
Another difference is that all living things come from other living things. One-celled living things divide to make two new one-celled things. Eggs, spores, seeds, babies, and growing new individuals from parts of their "parents" are all ways to reproduce new life from live things. Fire can come from a match, rubbing sticks together, a spark, or other things that are not fire.
So fire is a great example of something that has some characteristics of life. Thinking about ideas like these helps us to really figure out what we mean by life.
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=360
https://gsoutreach.gs.washington.edu/files/amazingcellsbook.pdf
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