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Howard,
That wasn't really what I was asking. My question is: How does
science empirically verify life as a quality or property of a living organism?
It cannot be measured directly, so how do they empirically verify it? As far as
I know, they don't. In medical circles, where "human life" is considered to be
so different (so much more important) from other life, they've put a lot of
work into trying to benchmark this. Ultimately, in medicine, certain physical
processes are used to verify life. Many a time it has been reported in the news
that someone was declared dead and was zipped in a body bag, and they weren't
dead after all-- giving folks an X-Files moment, I'm sure!
But I also have a new question, based on your post:
HP: I think of it like the epistemic principles in
physics, like the requirement that all empirically verifiable models (laws) obey
invariance principles.
How would you define an "invariance
principle"?
The reason I'm asking is connected to the first question
above. Basically, empirics are slippery. They're context dependent, just like
everything else. Literally: In the eye of the beholder. Empirics in science
consists of a set of rules, isn't that correct? Very much like our legal system.
Being able to prove or disprove something in a court of law is not the same
as arriving at truth or achieving justice. Empirics in science is a
lot like that, it seems to me. It's the substitution of syntax for semantics,
because syntax is seen as somehow more "objective" and "invariant". But there is
a big problem with doing that when we are evaluating complex systems, as we all
know.
And yet, there remains a need to legally determine certain
biological properties and various other issues that arise from the fact that we
are living organisms. So my question is a real one: How does science empirically
verify "life"?
Judith
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