Today I am going to explain the topic What is Living ? of the 1st chapter “The Livinig world” from NCERT BIOLOGY Test book.
What is Living ?
First of all we should to study about the three words ‘LIFE‘, ‘ORGANISM‘ and ‘LIVING‘.
The driving force of biological processes into an object is called Life which can be compared as a Softwere. Organism is a biological entity which is capable to organize life. Organism is act as a hardwere. When Life is existed within an organism then it is called Living (Living organism).
Organisation, Metabolism, Consciousness, Emergence, Growth and Reproduction are some unique features of living organism. As we can say an organism is living when it has life, firstly we discuss the unique feature of ‘Life’ amd ‘Organism’.
Organisation
The main feature of an organism is ‘Organisation’. As it is impossible to build a hardwere without any specific design, there is not any existance of organism without proper organisation. So Celluler organisation of the body is the defining feature of life forms (Living organism).
Metabolism
In the same way, Metabolism is a characteristic of life. The sum total of all the chemical reactions occurring in our body is Metabolism. No non-living object exhibit metabolism. Metabolic reaction can be performed on a non-living object but not metabolism. Because Celluler organisation is obviously required to conduct metabolism that means many metabolic reactions occur simultaneously on a coordinating fashion. That’s why Metabolism is a defining feature of all living organisms without exception.
Consciousness
After that, Consciousness is important feature of living organism. The ability to sense surrounding environment and respond to the stimuli is called consciousness. All organisms, from the prokaryotes to most complex eukaryotes can sense and respond to the stimuli. A organism is living or not, it can be understood If an organism is respond to stimuli. Therefore Consciousness is considerd as a defining property of living organisms. According to NCERT Biology text book, it is probably most ‘obvious’ and “technically complicated feature of all living organisms.
We, Human being is the only organism to aware very much for ourself and use the term ‘self-consciousness‘.
Emergence
Emergence is the other unique feature which represent the interact property of living organism. The property of a celluler organalle does not emerge with the property of cell but all the cell organalle constitue the cell by interacting each other.
Similarly, a single cell can not represnt a tissue but all the cells work together on a coordinating fashion and show the properties of tissue. These interactions result in emergent properties.
Growth
All living organism are grow. There are two main way to grow, one is increase in mass and another is increase in number of individuals. Growth is a characteristic of living systems.
But it can not be taken as a defining property of living organisms. because—
Firstly, Growth is not only seen in liviving oranism. Non-living object can also grow in terms of accumulating mass. For example, Mountain can be grown in height by covered with ice in winter.
Secondly, Growth of a unicelluler organism is not clearly defined in terms of increasing numbers. Growth and Reproduction are synonymous for unicelluler organism.
Thirdly, in animals it occur potentially only up to a certain age, not the entire life.
Reproduction
At last, we are talking about Reproduction. It is a vital biological process by which species continuity is maintained. In spite of that it also can not be defining feature of living organisms because there are some organisms like mule, sterile worker bees, infertile human couples etc. are not capable to perform reproduction. Although, no non-living object is capable of reproducing by itself.
Thanks for reading…