Month: September 2022

DEATH'S PATH. "Death is not unchanging, but rather has evolved over time." https://lnkd.in/dp_3aQ5 View in LinkedIn

GNARNY KNOT. "In the past, death posed a conundrum for biologists: death as such did not seem to perform a function in life, yet death seemed a part of life, since only living things died. Indeed, death did not seem to be one of life’s qualities, even though, with few exceptions, it was the end of life." https://lnkd.in/d-cTw6G View in LinkedIn

FITNESS NOT ACTING ON DEATH. "Likewise, death seemed incapable of evolving, since it did not contribute to the fitness of the individual, and genes would not, therefore, determine death." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275813 View in LinkedIn

SHIMMERING BACKDROP. "Like life, death is a facet of underlying continuity, endlessly moving and evolving." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275814 View in LinkedIn

NEW PERSPECTIVE. "The scale of death’s recent evolution is also difficult to grasp, and accepting it may require a thorough reorientation toward life." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275814 View in LinkedIn

DEATH AS AN ADAPTATION TO LIFE. "Instead of imagining death as the antithesis of life, death must be appreciated as an evolving part of life and an adaptation to life." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275814 View in LinkedIn

PATHWAY? "Death is not the waste of life it sometimes seems, but the pathway through which energy flows through virtual life and through its fractals." (Whatever that means). https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275813 View in LinkedIn

NORMATIVE LITTLE DEATHS. "One can now list the number of times particular tissues are replaced in one year: lining of the small intestine; lining of the stomach; epidermal covering of the lips; hepatocytes of the liver; lining of the trachea; and lining of the bladder. And all this replacement is perfectly normal and not a consequence of trauma. Ultimately, biologists recognized the role of cells in death as well as life: a living thing dies when its cells no longer develop or maintain it." https://lnkd.in/dTkk9-R View in LinkedIn

SIGMOID CURVE. "In fact, all cells can do is divide, produce products of differentiation, migrate or remain in place, and die, but the combination of these activities over the course of time are described by a curve. Remarkably, for the years between puberty and senescence, this curve for human beings parallels the Gompertzian exponential." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275818 View in LinkedIn

LIFE AS A CURVE. "This biological observation, that the empirically determined specific growth rate appears to decay proportionally with time, yields a simple model of growth, according to which the organism grows by some fundamentally exponential process, which undergoes the observed decay over its whole range." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275818 View in LinkedIn