"Tim Tyler"  wrote in message
news:celrvt$16vr$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Chris Gordon-Smith  wrote or quoted:
>
> > haiguang wrote:

[snippage]

> > Life needs to be able to perpetuate itself.
>
> Reproduction dosen't seem to be logically necessary - it
would be
> possible for a living system to consist of a single large
entity
> that grew into new environments rather than reproducting
itself -
> and most would still judge such an organism to be alive.
>
> There are large plants that operate like this - vegetative
growth -
> rather than reproduction.
>
> Consider, for example:
>
> ``Lomatia tasmanica: the oldest clonal plant on the
planet''
>
> http://www.research.utas.edu.au/reports/1998/clone.htm
>
> ...an article about the world's oldest known living thing.
> -- 
> __________
>  |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim{at}tt1lock.org  Remove
lock to reply.

Absolutely! The problem though is there is just no
appropriate
_general_ word I can find to replace "life" for something
which acts like life but does not replicate...or even, just
reproduce in any way. Perhaps, "metabolic system/entity",
but that doesn't quite do it for me...perhaps just
"operating system?" :) It seems though that there is no
recourse but to carefully separate the concept of "life"
from that of "living organism," the latter being something
that may grow and metabolize in the usual sense, but not
necessarily replicate in the usual sense (i.e., "divide.")
We might say then:

Stardate 2.1 10^4: Capt. Kirk landed on planet X and found
the first Slimelord--the only known living organism where a
single individual entity covered the entire planet. It's
prodigeous growth allowed it to grow to enormass mass and
survive virtually forever as parts of its body die off (this
remarkable metabolism and resultant growth rate allows it to
totally dominate all the other life on the planet which does
reproduce sexually.) Kirk was fortunate to be able to escape
before he and his ship was absorbed by the Slimelord as
food.                                    ...tonyC
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