Re: [pf] Is everything alive?

At 10:57 21/02/00 -0800, you wrote:
> ... Winona LaDuke ....  One thing she mentioned that
>reminded me of an earlier thread about what was alive and not - in
>Ojibwa, the words rock and tree are both animate words - meaning they
>are viewed as alive.
>
**  Mike on another list kept insisting that one couldn't discuss something
unless the key words were defined.

**  I disagreed, at least as regards "living sustainably" is concerned; the
most correct version is nearly useless, as regards helping the individual
decide what they should do, so not much good for discussion. One needs to
specify scale: time, and numbers of individuals, so I use 'description'
rather than 'definition'. See how "sustainable" can be tested, in my:
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/Sustainable-Questions.html

**  However, "alive" /is/ suitable for definition, and that should be
testable, IMO. Naturally I lean towards the definition used in science. I
don't have anything handy to look it up in, but I'd say that homeostasis
would be necessary: using energy and matter to maintain its (form and)
function. That is, working against the general tendency to break down
(decaying towards chaos), the 2nd law of thermodynamics. And probably
"alive" would have to include at least the possibility of reproduction,
since death is always an essential feature of life, and reproduction
ensures some continuation beyond death.

**  If one wants to approve of maintaining things like streams and rivers
in their pristine condition, one could do worse than the Maori who use
"wairua", often translated as "spirit", to describe what is attacked and
sometimes extinguished by humans treating a stream as a sewer, or cutting
into a valued hill and spreading the rock on gravel roads.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
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