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/sci/ - Science & Math

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10829838 No.10829838 [Reply] [Original]

The human being is made of many cells, does that mean we are not an individual organism?

>> No.10829854

Humans are not individual organisms. But not because they are multicellular. They have colonies of other lifeforms living in them which are required for the human cells to live. Humans are a symbiotic colony of cells. And nothing is really discrete at the atomic level, lifeforms swap atoms throughout their lifespan, you don't have the same atoms in your body as you did when you were 5.

>> No.10829858
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10829858

>>10829838
No, even our cells are dubios to be singular organisms.
There's gondolas striding along the DNA like picture related.

>> No.10830062

Human cells are outnumbered by bacteria/viruses/microorganisms that live in our body yet we don't consider them part of us. This is because our brain, the central consciousness hub, has no control over them. At our core we're our brains + ancillary cells.

>> No.10830154

>>10829854
It's not absolutely required to have symbiotic bacteria for a human to live, but your life would be pretty shit without them. Cows on the other hand require bacteria to break down their food source and die if those bacteria are disrupted. Either way humans are "multicellular" organisms, ie. A larger homologous unit of life than a single cell.

>> No.10831609

What's the difference between a colony organism like a Man O War and any other multicelluar organism?

>> No.10831613

>>10830062
Who has control over the brain, then?

>> No.10831893

>>10831613
You, in the brain, via executive function.

>> No.10832257

>>10829838
Yes.
Now my turn: if you have the left half of your healthy brain removed and successfuly transplanted into a waiting donor body, are there now two of you? Or do you "die" and two new people are created as a result?

If the right-you has sex with the left-you, is it incest? Now suppose the left-you has a female body. How would it feel to impregnate a person who, until recently, shared all of your thoughts and memories?

>> No.10832262
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10832262

>>10832257
If your right brain impregnated your left brain would the child have your brain?

>> No.10832282

>>10830154
>It's not absolutely required to have symbiotic bacteria for a human to live

It quite literally is. The mitochondria in our cells are bacteria, the product of some primordial endosymbiosis event, as are plant chloroplasts.

>> No.10832746

>>10829838
There is no objective standard of what an "individual organism" or "individual object" is. These are just models that aid your survival.

>> No.10832762
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10832762

>>10832262
Would it then further reproduce incestuously?
And can divergence be attained so that incest be broken out of before critical problem .

>> No.10834087

>>10829838
We have more foreign cells in our gut than our own in our whole body... We are just a vehicle for sugar craving bacteria...

>> No.10834597

>>10832282
Okay I'll give you 50%, no one would call chloroplasts or mitochondria truly symbiotic. They've evolved for long enough to become a part of eukaryotes.

>> No.10834613

>>10831609
The existential consensus