It would seem that the differences between the living and the non-living are immediately visible. However, everything is not quite simple. Scientists argue that such basic skills as nutrition, breathing and communication among themselves, is a sign not only of living organisms. As people who lived during the Stone Age believed that all can be called living without exception. These are stones, and grass, and trees.
In a word, all surrounding nature can be called living. Nevertheless, modern scientists distinguish more distinct distinctive features. Moreover, the coincidence factor of absolutely all the features of the organism that exudes life is very important. This is necessary in order to thoroughly determine the differences between living and nonliving.
The essence and fundamental features of a living organism
Banal intuition allows each person to draw a parallel between the living and nonliving.
Nevertheless, sometimes people have difficulties in order to correctly identify the main differences between living and non-living. According to one of the brilliant writers, a living body consists entirely of living organisms, and the non-living - from non-living. In addition to such tautologies in science, there are theses that more accurately reflect the essence of the question. Regrettably, even these very hypotheses do not fully provide answers to all the existing dilemmas.
One way or another, the differences between living organisms, bodies of inanimate nature are still being studied and analyzed. Engels's reasoning, for example, is very widespread. His opinion is that life cannot literally continue without the metabolic process inherent in protein bodies. This process, accordingly, cannot occur without the process of interaction with objects of living nature. Here is an analogy of a burning candle and a live mouse or rat. The differences are that the mouse lives due to the process of respiration, that is, due to the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and the burning process is only carried out in the candle, although these objects are at the same stages of life. From this illustrative example, it follows that mutual exchange with nature is possible not only in the case of living objects, but also in the case of non-living ones. Based on the above information, metabolism cannot be called the main factor in the classification of living objects. This shows that pinpointing the differences between living and non-living organisms is a very time-consuming mission.
To the minds of mankind, this information has come a long time ago. According to the test philosopher from France D. Didro, it is quite possible to understand what one tiny cell is, and a very big problem is to understand the essence of the whole organism. According to many scientists, only a combination of specific biological characteristics can give an idea of what a living organism is and what is the difference between living nature and nonliving.
List of properties of a living organism
The properties of living organisms include:
- The content of the necessary biopolymers and substances bearing hereditary traits.
- The cellular structure of organisms (everything except viruses).
- Energy and material exchange with the surrounding space.
- The ability to reproduce and reproduce similar organisms that carry hereditary traits.
Summarizing all the information described above, it is worth saying that only living bodies can eat, breathe, and multiply. The difference between nonliving is that they can only exist.
Life is a code
We can conclude that the basis of all life processes are proteins (proteins) and nucleic acids. Systems with such components are complexly organized. The shortest and, nevertheless, capacious definition was put forward by the famous biologist from America by the name Tipler, who became the creator of the publication called “Physics of Immortality”. According to him, only that which contains nucleic acid can be recognized as a living creature. Also, according to the scientist, life is a certain kind of code. Adhering to this opinion, it is worth suggesting that only by changing this code, you can achieve eternal life and the absence of human health disorders. This is not to say that this hypothesis resonated with everyone, but still some of its followers appeared. This assumption was created with the aim of isolating the ability of a living organism to accumulate and process information.
Considering that the question of the difference between living and nonliving to this day remains the subject of numerous discussions, it makes sense to add a detailed examination of the structure of elements of living and nonliving to the study.
The most important properties of living systems
Of the most important properties of living systems, many professors of biological sciences distinguish:
- Compactness.
- The ability to make order out of existing randomness.
- Real, energy and information exchange with the surrounding space.
An important role is played by the so-called “feedback loops” that are formed inside autocatalytic interactions.
Life significantly surpasses other varieties of the existence of the material in terms of the diversity of chemical components and the dynamics of processes that occur in a living personification. The compact structure of living organisms is a consequence of the fact that the molecules are rigidly ordered.
In the structure of inanimate organisms, the cellular structure is simple, which can not be said about the living.
The latter have a past, which is justified by cellular memory. This is also a significant difference between living organisms and nonliving.
The life process of the body is directly related to factors such as heredity and variability. As for the first case, the symptoms are transmitted to young individuals from older ones, and are little susceptible to environmental influences. In the second case, the opposite is true: each particle of the body changes due to interaction with environmental factors.
The beginning of earthly life
The differences between living objects of nature, non-living organisms and other elements excite the minds of many scientists. According to them, it became known about life on earth from the moment the concept of what DNA is and why it was created.
As for information on the transition of simple protein compounds to more complex ones, reliable data on this subject have not yet been obtained. There is a theory of biochemical evolution, but it is presented only in general terms. This theory says that between coacervates, which are clots of organic compounds by nature, molecules of complex carbohydrates can “wedge”, which led to the formation of a simple cell membrane that stabilized the coacervates. As soon as the protein molecule was attached to the coacervate, another similar cell appeared, having the ability to grow and further divide.
The most time-consuming step in the process of proving this hypothesis is the argumentation of the ability of living organisms to divide. There is no doubt that other knowledge will reinforce the model of the appearance of life, supported by new scientific experience. However, the more strongly the new exceeds the old, the more difficult it becomes to actually explain how exactly this “new” appeared. Accordingly, here we will always be talking about approximate data, and not about specifics.
Creation processes
One way or another, the next important stage in the creation of a living organism is the reconstruction of the membrane that protects the cell from harmful environmental factors. It is the membranes that are the initial stage in the appearance of the cell, which serves as its distinctive link. Each process, which is a feature of a living organism, proceeds inside the cell. A huge number of actions that serve as the basis for the life of the cell, that is, the provision of the necessary substances, enzymes and other material, takes place inside the membranes. In this situation, enzymes play a very important role, each of which is responsible for a specific function. The principle of action of enzyme molecules is that other active substances immediately seek to join them. Due to this, the reaction in the cell occurs almost in the blink of an eye.
Cell structure
From an elementary school biology course, it is clear that the synthesis of proteins and other vital components of the cell is primarily responsible for cytoplasm. Almost any human cell is capable of synthesizing more than 1000 different proteins. In magnitude, these cells can be either 1 millimeter or 1 meter, an example of such are the components of the nervous system of the human body. Most types of cells have the ability to regenerate, but there are exceptions, which are already mentioned nerve cells and muscle fibers.
From the moment that life first began, the nature of the planet Earth is constantly developing and modernizing. Evolution has been going on for several hundred million years, however, all the secrets and interesting facts have not been revealed to this day. Life forms on the planet are divided into nuclear and nuclear, unicellular and multicellular.
Unicellular organisms are characterized by the fact that all important processes occur in a single cell. Multicellular, on the contrary, consist of many identical cells capable of division and autonomous existence, but, nevertheless, arranged in a single whole. Multicellular organisms occupy a huge space on Earth. This group includes people, and animals, and plants, and much, much more. Each of these classes is divided into species, subspecies, genera, families, and more. For the first time, knowledge about the levels of organization of life on planet Earth was obtained from the experience of wildlife. The next stage is directly related to the interaction with wildlife. It is also worth studying in detail all the systems and subsystems of the world.
Organization of living organisms
- Molecular
- Cellular
- Tissue.
- Organ.
- Ontogenetic.
- Population.
- Species.
- Biogeocentric.
- Biosphere.
In the process of studying the simplest molecular genetic level, the highest criterion of awareness was reached. Chromosomal theory of heredity, analysis of mutations, a detailed study of cells, viruses and phages served as the basis for the discovery of the underlying genetic systems.
Sample knowledge of the structural levels of molecules was obtained through the influence of the discovery of cellular theory about the structure of living organisms. In the mid-19th century, people did not know that the body consists of many elements, and believed that everything was closed on the cell. Then it was compared with an atom. The famous scientist of the time from France, Louis Pasteur, suggested that the most important difference between living organisms and non-living organisms is molecular inequality, characteristic only of living nature. Scientists called this property of molecules chirality (the term is translated from Greek and means "hand"). This name was given in view of the fact that this property resembles the difference between the right hand and the left.
Along with a detailed study of the protein, scientists continued to reveal all the secrets of DNA and the principle of heredity. This issue became most relevant at the moment when it was time to identify the difference between living organisms and inanimate nature. If the scientific method is used in determining the boundaries of the living and lifeless, it is quite possible to encounter a number of certain difficulties.
Viruses - who are they?
There is an opinion about the existence of the so-called border stages between living and nonliving. Basically, biologists argued and still argue about the origin of viruses. The difference between viruses and ordinary cells is that they can multiply only with the aim of harming, but not with the goal of rejuvenating and prolonging the life of the individual. Also, viruses do not have the ability to exchange substances, grow, respond to irritating factors, and so on.
Viral cells that are outside the body have a hereditary mechanism, however, they do not contain enzymes, which are a kind of foundation for a full-fledged existence. Therefore, such cells can exist only thanks to vital energy and useful substances taken from a donor, which is a healthy cell.
The main signs of the difference between living and nonliving
Any person without special knowledge can see that a living organism is somewhat different from a non-living one. This is especially obvious if you look at the cells under a magnifying glass or a microscope lens. In the structure of viruses there is only one cell endowed with one set of organelles. In the composition of an ordinary cell, on the contrary, there are many interesting things. The difference between living organisms and inanimate nature is that strictly ordered molecular compounds can be traced in a living cell. The list of these same compounds includes proteins, nucleic acids. Even the virus has a shell of nucleic acid, despite the fact that it does not have the rest of the "chain links".
The difference between wildlife from inanimate is obvious. The cell of a living organism has the functions of nutrition and metabolism, as well as the ability to breathe (in the case of plants, it also enriches the space with oxygen).
Another distinctive ability of a living organism is self-reproduction with the transfer of all inherent hereditary features (for example, the case when a child is born similar to one of the parents). We can say that this is the main difference between the living. A non-living organism with such ability does not exist.
This fact is inextricably linked with the fact that a living organism is capable of not only solitary, but also team improvement. A very important skill of any living element is the ability to adapt to any conditions and even to those in which it did not have to exist before. A good example is the ability of a hare to change color, protecting itself from predators, and a bear to hibernate in order to survive the cold season. The habit of animals to omnivorous belongs to the same properties. This is the difference between the bodies of living nature. A non-living organism is not capable of this.
Non-living organisms are also subject to change, only slightly different, for example, birch in autumn changes the color of foliage. On top of that, living organisms have the ability to make contact with the outside world, which representatives of inanimate nature cannot. Animals can attack, make noise, reel in case of danger, release needles, wave their tail. As for the higher groups of living organisms, they have their own mechanisms of communication within the community that are not always subject to modern science.
