when i was in advanced placement biology in high school, i was fascinated by the scientific definition of life; fascinated by knowing what was alive and what wasn't. i engaged in self-righteous arguments with friends based on what i thought i had learned. i learned of the subjectivity of science in college and resented bacon (still do)for his pompous stand for science and empirical knowledge at the expense of the humanities, the arts and heart-knowledge. my father told me in high school that about half the world believes that we are primarily material and the other half believes that we are primarily spiritual. i have lived surrounded by both ideas and have always found something lacking with presented with an exclusivity of either one. the spiritual gives significance to the material. the material gives expression to the spiritual. heartless materialism brings meaningless to all it touches. spirituality with no expression, does nothing, accomplishes nothing, fails to acheive its own purposes. how can we enjoy wholeness without the spiritual? how can we know anything about the spiritual without expression in the material to direct our vision beyond what our eyes see? and why, oh why am i only now challenging my own arrogant ideas about the nature of life?
staring into the flames of a candle, i see that it moves, that it breathes, that it eats, that it excretes, that it reproduces...all scientific qualifications for life. it has no cells or dna, but can we say it has no life? a scientist can say "not as we do." but that is all. the truth is that we don't know. how often humans disregard what is not like us.
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