The Definition Of Life Farnsworth Analysis

How does one decipher between living and non-living? In the article, The Definition of life, Professor Farnsworth argues that life is essentially indefinable. He refers to biological life as a continuum. Throughout the duration of the article, Farnsworth explains how in biology, life cannot be dwindled down to yes or no answers. Rather, he quotes, "nature can trick us with questions that have hidden false assumptions" implying that what one defines as "death" is purely subjective. Farnsworth 's goal is to prove to his students that by standard definitions, a motorcycle and a human are both living. Specifically, Farnsworth argues that technically, all living things can respire, consume energy, respond to stimuli, evolve, think, repair itself, grow, reproduce and are made out of cells. Yet, these things do not necessarily equate to life or death. Farnsworth explains that in his high school biology class he was taught how to separate living and non-living things. First, he says that a living thing respires, meaning that it uses oxygen. But the use of oxygen for function is not exclusive to only "living " organisms. He explains that his bike also requires oxygen which is then burnt up in the cylinders. This is true, because oxygen plays a similar role in the bike as it does in the human body …show more content…
Within living things, exists DNA, which stores information and genetic coding. These genes are hereditary and therefore passed down through generations. Although this is incomparable to a bike, it can be compared to complex machinery such as computers. Computers are built of extremely complex coding which determines how the computer functions. Similarly to DNA, a slight error in this coding results in a mutation and can potentially be problematic. Therefore, even something as specific as genetic coding, cannot be exclusive to