Differences between the living and nonliving: what is the difference?

It would seem that the difference between the living and the lifeless is immediately visible. However, everything is not quite easy. Scientists argue that basic skills such as nutrition, breathing and communication among themselves, is a sign not only of living organisms. As people who lived during the Stone Age believed, all can be called alive without exception. This is the stones, and grass, and trees.

In short, all the surrounding nature can be called alive. Nevertheless, modern scientists distinguish more distinctive features. At the same time, the factor of coincidence of all the features of the organism that exudes life is very important. This is necessary in order to thoroughly determine the differences between the living and the lifeless.

Essence and fundamental features of a living organism

Banal intuition allows each person to approximately draw a parallel between the living and the non-living.

Nevertheless, sometimes people have difficulties in order to correctly identify the main differences between the living and the lifeless. According to one of the genius writers, the living body consists entirely of living organisms, and the lifeless body is made up of inanimate ones. In addition to such tautologies, there are theses in science that more accurately reflect the essence of the question posed. Regrettably, these very hypotheses do not fully answer all existing dilemmas.

Anyway, the differences between living organisms, bodies of inanimate nature are still being studied and analyzed. The reasoning of Engels is very widespread, for example. His opinion says that life literally can not continue without the process of metabolism inherent in protein bodies. This process, respectively, can not occur without the process of interaction with objects of living nature. Here is an analogy of a burning candle and a living mouse or rat. The difference is that the mouse lives by the process of breathing, that is, by exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide, and in the candle only the burning process is carried out, 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 inanimate ones. Based on the above information, metabolism can not be called the main factor in the classification of living objects. This shows that it is very laborious mission to pinpoint the differences between a living and an inanimate organism.

Before the minds of mankind, this information came a long time ago. According to the French philosopher-testator D. Diderot, it is quite realistic to understand what one tiny cell is, and a very big problem is to get to the core 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 and non-living nature.

List of properties of a living organism

Among the properties of living organisms are:

• The content of the necessary biopolymers and substances bearing hereditary signs.
• Cellular structure of organisms (all 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, reproduce. The difference between the inanimate is that they can only exist.

Life is code

It can be concluded that the basis of all life processes are proteins (proteins) and nucleic acids. Systems with the presence of such components are difficult to organize. The shortest and, nevertheless, capacious definition was put forward by the well-known scientist-biologist from America by the name of Tipler, who became the creator of the publication called "physics of immortality". According to him, a living being can only recognize that which contains nucleic acid. Also, according to the scientist, life is a certain kind of code. Adhering to this opinion, it is necessary to assume that only by changing this code one can achieve eternal life and absence of violations of human health. It can not be said that this hypothesis has found a response among all, but some of its followers have appeared. This assumption is created in order to isolate the ability of a living organism to accumulate and process information.

Taking into account the fact that the question of distinguishing the living from the inanimate still remains the subject of numerous discussions, it makes sense to add a detailed consideration of the structure of the elements of the 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 singled out:

• Compactness.
• The ability to do order from the existing chaos.
• Real, energy and information exchange with the surrounding space.

An important role is played by the so-called "feedback loops", which are formed inside the autocatalytic interactions.

Life far exceeds other types of material existence in terms of the diversity of chemical components and the dynamics of processes that occur in a living personification. The compactness of the structure of living organisms is a consequence of the fact that the molecules are rigidly ordered.

In the composition of inanimate organisms, the cellular structure is simple, which can not be said of the living.
The latter have a past, which is grounded in cellular memory. This is also a significant difference of living organisms from inanimate ones.

The life process of the organism has a direct connection with such factors as heredity and variability. With regard to the first case, the signs are passed on to young individuals from the older ones, and are not much influenced by the environment. In the second case, on the contrary, every particle of the body changes due to interaction with the factors of the surrounding space.

The beginning of the earthly life

Differences of living objects of nature, inanimate organisms and other elements excite the minds of many scientists. According to them, life on earth became known from the moment when the notion of what DNA was and what it was created for emerged.

As for information on the transition of simple protein compounds to more complex, reliable data on this subject has not yet been received. There is a theory about biochemical evolution, but it is presented only in general terms. This theory states that molecules of complex carbohydrates can "wedge" between coacervates, which are by nature clots of organic compounds, which leads to the formation of the simplest cell membrane, which gave coacervates stabilization. As soon as the protein molecule was attached to the coacervate, another similar cell appeared, which had the capacity for growth and further division.

The most laborious stage in the process of proving this hypothesis is the argumentation of the ability of living organisms to divide. There is no doubt that the model of the emergence of life will include other knowledge, reinforced by new scientific experience. However, the more strongly the new surpasses the old, the more difficult it becomes to actually explain exactly how this "new" appeared. Accordingly, here it will always be about approximate data, and not about the specifics.

Creation Processes

One way or another, the next important stage in the creation of a living organism is the reconstruction of the membrane, which protects the cell from the harmful factors of the external environment. 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, flows inside the cell. A huge number of actions that serve as the basis of the life of the cell, that is, the provision of the necessary substances, enzymes and other material, occurs inside the membranes. Very important role in this situation, enzymes, each of which is responsible for a particular function. The principle of action of enzyme molecules is that other active substances aspire to join them immediately. Thanks to this, the reaction in the cell occurs almost in the blink of an eye.

Cellular structure

From the initial school course of biology it is clear that the responsibility for the synthesis of proteins and other vital components of the cell is primarily of cytopolasm. Virtually any human cell is capable of carrying out synthezis of more than 1000 different proteins. The size of these cells can be as in 1 millimeter, and in 1 meter, an example of such are the components of the nervous system of the human body. The ability to regenerate has most types of cells, but there are exceptions, which are already mentioned nerve cells and muscle fibers.

Since the moment when life began for the first time, the nature of the planet Earth is continuously developing and modernizing. Evolution has been going on for several hundred million years, however, all secrets and interesting facts have not been disclosed to this day. The life forms on the planet are subdivided into nuclear and dinuclear, 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 a set of identical cells capable of division and autonomous existence, but, nevertheless, assembled into a single whole. Multicellular organisms occupy a huge space on Earth. This group includes people, animals, plants, and much, much more. Each of these classes is divided into species, subspecies, genera, families, and so on. For the first time knowledge about the levels of organization of life on the planet Earth was obtained from the experience of living nature. The next stage has a direct relationship to the interaction with wildlife. Also it is worth exploring in detail all the systems and subsystems of the surrounding world.

Organization of living organisms

• Molecular.
• Cellular.
• Tissue.
• Organ.
• Ontogenetic.
• Population.
• Species.
• Biogeocentric.
• Biospheric.

In the process of studying the simplest molecular-genetic level, the highest level of awareness has been achieved. The chromosome theory of heredity, the analysis of mutations, the detailed study of cells, viruses and phages have served as the basis for the discovery of the underlying genetic systems.

An approximate knowledge of the structural levels of molecules was obtained through the influence of the discovery of the cellular theory of the structure of living organisms. In the middle of the 19th century, people did not know that the body was made up of many elements, and believed that everything was closing up on the cage. Then it was compared to an atom. The famous scientist of that time from France Louis Pasteur suggested that the most important difference of living organisms from inanimate ones is molecular inequality peculiar only to living nature. Scientists have 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 one.

Simultaneously with a detailed study of protein, scientists continued to disclose all the secrets of DNA and the principle of heredity. The most urgent issue was at the time when it was time to identify the difference of living organisms from inanimate nature. If one is guided by the scientific method when determining the limits of the living and lifeless, it is quite possible to encounter a number of definite difficulties.

Viruses - who are they?

There is an opinion on the existence of so-called border stages between the living and the lifeless. Most biologists have argued and are still arguing about the origin of the viruses. The difference between viruses and ordinary cells is that they can multiply only to harm, but not to rejuvenate and prolong the life of the individual. Also, viruses do not have the ability to exchange substances, grow, react to irritating factors, and so on.

Viral cells that are outside the body have a hereditary mechanism, nevertheless, they do not contain enzymes, which are a kind of foundation for a full-fledged existence. Therefore, such cells can exist only because of vital energy and useful substances taken from the donor, which is a healthy cell.

The main signs of the difference between the living and the lifeless

Any person without special knowledge can see that the living organism is somewhat different from the inanimate one. This is especially obvious if we consider cells under a magnifying glass or a microscope lens. In the structure of viruses there is only one cell, endowed with a single set of organoids. In the ordinary cell, on the other hand, there are many interesting things. The difference between living organisms and inanimate nature lies in the fact that in a living cell, strictly ordered molecular compounds can be traced. The list of these very compounds includes proteins, nucleic acids. Even the virus has a shell of nucleic acid, despite the fact that it has no other "chain links".

The difference between living nature and the inanimate is obvious. The cell of a living organism has 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 distinguishing ability of a living organism is self-reproduction with the transfer of all inherent inherited features (for example, the case when a child is born like one of the parents). We can say that this is the main difference of the living. An inanimate organism that possesses such an ability does not exist.

With this fact, there is an indissoluble connection that a living organism is capable not only of a single, but also of team perfection. A very important skill of any living element is the ability to adapt to any conditions and even to those that did not have to exist before. A striking example is the ability of a hare to change color, defending against predators, and a bear - to hibernate in order to survive the cold season. To the same properties belongs the habit of animals to omnivorousness. This is the difference between the bodies of living nature. An inanimate organism can not do this.

Non-living organisms are also subject to change, only slightly different, for example, the birch in autumn changes the color of foliage. In addition, living organisms have the opportunity to come into contact with the surrounding world, which can not be representatives of inanimate nature. Animals can attack, raise noise, raise their wool 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.

conclusions

Before determining the difference between living organisms, inanimate bodies, or discussing the fact of belonging of an organism to categories of living or inanimate nature, it is necessary to thoroughly study all the signs of both. If only one of the signs does not correspond to the class of living organisms, it can no longer be called alive. One of the main features of a living cell is the presence of a nucleic acid and a number of protein compounds in the composition. This is the fundamental difference between living objects. Non-living bodies with such a feature on the Earth do not exist.

Living organisms, unlike inanimate ones, have the ability to reproduce and leave offspring, and also get used to any habitat conditions.

Only living organisms possess the ability to communicate, and their "language" of communication is not subject to the study of biologists of any level of professionalism.

Using these materials, each person will be able to distinguish between the living and the non-living. Also, the distinguishing feature of animate and inanimate nature is that representatives of the living natural world can think, and samples of the lifeless can not.