Let do a simple imagination experiment.
It’s late 2006. Out there in the universe is a planet inhabited by aliens as curious as the human race. They have been exploring the wide blue yonder and chanced upon the planet Earth. Let’s call this alien planet “Ahom” and the aliens that live on it “Ahomfians”.
Now these Ahomfians are different than us. You see, they cannot see us humans. They however see structures. They see our homes, churches, skyscrapers and mobile homes. They are fascinated by them.
One of the Ahomfian explorers recommended studying our planet. Their ruling council agreed. The explorer designed a study to look the strange structures on our planet. He picked a random street somewhere in the suburbs of Middle America with beautiful single-family homes.
A team of Ahomfians was sent down and these aliens fitted all the homes on this random street with a multitude of sensors. When they returned to their planet, they were able to monitor parameters like temperature of the homes, heat emission, sounds and vibrations.
The study started in 2007, a year before the crash of the real-estate market.
The 30 homes on that street were all new constructions and and all of them but five were occupied. The Ahomfians, unable to see the humans in those homes, noticed a difference in heat emissions and other parameters between those homes and the other 25. The 25 homes felt “alive”. The others seemed “dead”.
Then 2008 came around and the economy crashed. All of a sudden, more of the homes seemed to “die”. By the end of 2008, only 10 of the homes were “alive”.
The aliens wondered what had happened.
Then after about a year, things seemed to change. More of the homes started to come “alive”. The heat emissions went up. The homes emitted more vibrations and sounds. By the end of 2009, all the homes were emitting heat and sounds and seemed “alive”
After 5 years, the team wrote a report. Their conclusion was on the new planet they had “discovered”, there were immobile structures that seemed to go through several life cycles, the timing of which was quite unpredictable. They recommended more studies.
Now if these aliens could see us humans, they would have realized that these homes come “alive” when they are occupied and feel “dead” when they are not.
Makes one think of life, doesn’t it? Doubt me? I’ll show you.
When one has life, the body is alive. Death ensues when life ends.
Aren’t our bodies just receptacles for whatever makes us alive, just like those homes the aliens studied? Thus when a body is occupied by this life agent, that human is alive but dies when that agent leaves? The spiritually-inclined will call this agent the soul and make it responsible for the gift of life.
Or is it?
Let’s go back to homes analogy and think of what makes a home worth living in. It has to be structurally sound, affordable for and attractive to the buyer and in a fitting neighborhood. If any of those things change, homeowners tend to sell and move on. Thus homes that suit this bill tend to attract buyers and thus become “alive”
If we go back to the body, can we also apply this analogy?
One may say that there are biological factors that are conducive to life and when they are absent, life escapes. Can it also mean that if one was to construct a body, say out of stem cells, such that it was receptive to life, it could come alive? Would this life agent find this body and occupy it?
Let’s take this a step further. Is life created when a biological system becomes viable. So if I were to use stem cells to create all the various human organs and string them together into my own Frankenstein so his heart beats and his neurons I grew in the lab seem to transmit messages, would he come alive? After all, he would be biologically viable.
I guess my question is the age-old query: “What is life?”
Is it a spiritual occupation of a human body, making it alive or does life ensue as a result of viable biologic processes?
If one believes in the former, then life and death are all-or-nothing processes. You are alive then you die. Dead or alive! No protracted transitions. One can disagree with my premise and cite the myriad examples of people who had near-death experience s and their stories. That somehow, the life agent or soul has a change of heart and returns, restoring the viability of the body’s biological systems. Which further illustrates the point that this school of thought attributes the viability of life to the life agent.
However, if one believes in the latter, then life and death are not all-or-nothing. Then as long as we can prolong the viability of those biological processes, life hangs around to a degree. As long we can keep the CPR going, as long as we can cool the body to 18 degrees Celsius, as long as we can keep up with the blood loss, there may be a chance. Then life is a result of biology not the effect of a life agent.
What is life?
I think I’ll play an Ahomfian card and say, “More studies are needed”.