What is life? To the physicist the two distin-guishing features of living systems are complexity and organization. Even a simple single-celled organism, primitive as it is, displays an intricacy and fidelity unmat-ched by any product of human ingenuity. Consider, for example, a lowly bacterium. Close inspection reveals acomplex network of function and form. The bacterium may interact with its environment in a variety of ways,propelling it self, attacking enemies, moving towards oraway from external stimuli, exchanging material in acontrolled fashion. Its internal workings resemble avast city in organization. Much of the control rests withthe cell nucleus, wherein is also contained the genetic‘code’, the chemical blue print that enables the bacte-rium to replicate. The chemical structures that controland direct all this activity may involve molecules withas many as a million atoms strung together in a com-plicated yet highly specific way. (...)
It is important to appreciate that a biological organism is made from perfectly ordinary atoms. (...) Anatom of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, or phosphorus inside a living cell is no different from a similar atom out-side, and there is a steady stream of such atoms pas-sing into and out of all biological organisms. Clearly, then, life cannot be reduced to a property of an organism’s constituent parts. Life is not a cumulative phe-nomenon like, for example, weight. For though wemay not doubt that a cat or a geranium is living, wewould search in vain for any sign that an individual cat-atom or geranium-atom is living.
Sometimes this appears paradoxical. How can acollection of inanimate atoms be animate? Some people have argued that it is impossible to build life out of non-life, so there must be an additional, non-material,ingredient within all living things – a life-force – or spi-ritual essence which owes its origin, ultimately, to God. This is the ancient doctrine of vitalism.
An argument frequently used in support of vitalism concerns behaviour. A characteristic feature of living things is that they appear to behave in a purposive way, as though towards a specific end.
PAUL DAVIES. God and the New Physics.N.Y. –
Simon & Schuster, Inc.,1984.
De acordo com o texto:
a) as formas superiores de vida caracterizam-se pela complexidade e organização.
b) o comportamento dos organismos biológicos é definido pela forma com que os átomos se organizam no interior das células.
c) a vida resulta pura e simplesmente de uma combinação química.
d) é possível obter vida a partir de átomos inanimados.
e) o comportamento das coisas vivas parece corroborar a doutrina do vitalismo.
