Week 10 Assignments - Life and Living Systems

I know I'm a living system because....:

Strictly speaking, and based on my existing amount of education, a living system exhibits certain biological functions and so do I; a living system grows and changes and evolves, it uses oxygen to sustain life, it reproduces, and it ultimately degrades and then dies.

I have heard another definition yet, that a thing is considered living when it exhibits consciousness - or when it appears to be capable of independent thought and then is able to make cognitive connections between thought and action....I am reading Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and this concept is addressed in this novel when the computer system begins to exhibit these qualities and the main character realizes that the computer has come to life. While this has been a popular notion in sci fi for quite a long time, when one looks at the rate of technological advance which exists now and which is projected into the future (see url below for an interesting youtube video on this), then this concept really doesn't seem so far fetched after all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY&feature=email

Biophysics and Oriental Medicine:

Someone in class brought up the concept of 5 element theory when we were talking about autopoiesis, and it occurs to me that this concept also applies to biophysics - taken quite literally, the 5 elements encompass those natural elements that are essentially the building blocks of that which we consider to be living. Furthermore, these elements act upon each other and are affected by each other, and balance is critical for a healthy system. Biophysics is one aspect of the biosphere, but involves an understanding of how systems interact and affect one another - and imbalances are studied for cause and effect, while a state of balance is understood to be the ultimate goal for a system.

This just seems to be a very small example of the similarity and synthesis of western science and eastern medicine.