How come cells are alive, but the pieces that make up them aren’t?
In: Biology
How come a square is a square, but the 4 lines that make it, are not a square?
Our definitions of things have requirements in order for the definition to be applicable. The parts of a cell don’t meet the definition, but their gestalt (the sum of the parts is bigger than the whole), does.
Because of how we define life: you’ve gotta be able to reproduce, to react to stimuli, to pass down your characteristics, etc. The pieces of a cell don’t qualify, but the system as a whole can. Kinda like how a car can drive down the street, but the individual pieces of a car can’t drive by themselves.
A cell is like a factory. It’s made up of subsections called organelles: one brings raw materials into the building, another is responsible for generating power for the factory, another processes and packs these materials into products to be exported/used elsewhere in the facility, and so on.
When everything is connected and together in its place, the factory works well; remove any subsection and leave it by itself, and it’ll lack something crucial in the production process to be able to function properly.
The cell, our factory in this analogy, is the smallest autonomous functioning unit. There’s no way to go smaller without giving up this autonomy.
How come a cake tastes like cake but each ingredient doesn’t?
This concept is called “emergence”, it basically says that if you put a bunch of simple things together, it can create something new with properties that the individual does not. Proteins and organic molecules are not alive, but cells are. This extends to larger scales – a single ant can’t do much on its own, but together with a colony they can create large burrows, take down huge enemies, and intelligently search for food as a group.
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