How do we die?

[keef]

apoptosis? not heard of it. care to explain? hmm. i am sort of interested in the telomere thingy. i tink tat's the closest explanation.

[Amrik]

@keef
yeah, i think abt tht too! hehe

[keef]

but i need more details! lol. hope someone would really enlighten me. it's really interesting when u sometimes place philosophy and science together and they dun complement each other

i agree tat pple will tend to die easily if they lose their purpose in life. but wat causes tat scientifically.

and wat is brain death? the body is still functioning but not the brain? how issit possible when the brain is needed for certain homeostatic activities of the body.

[Amrik]

this might enlighten u....i think so

Click Here

[Beetle]

But science only answers "how", so philosophy has to answer "why".

Hmmm, I wonder does it really need to exist answer to question why? Must everything have purpose? Are we humans afraid that our life wont have meaning if we dont find some greater purpose for it than just to be alive? If we are gonna stick to the hardcore evolution than what was the meaning of the first random agregation of organic moleculs? If it was random than where is meaning there? And if it wasnt than who intended it?

Does all things in our life have purpose? Does anybody`s birth or death have greater meaning than just it? I do not mean in human perspectiv like someone died to save a child or died for democracy or died for peace, I mean in cosmic, not antropocentric way. Is there a difference, in terms of purpose, between death of human and a death of antilope in savana?

Hmmm, I really do wonder. Not what is the purpose of us but is there one?

[Micky T]

In biology, senescence is the combination of processes of deterioration which follow the period of development of an organism. For the science of the care of the elderly, see gerontology; for experimental gerontology, see life extension. The word senescence is derived from the Latin word senex, meaning "old man" or "old age."

Cellular senescence is the phenomenon where cells lose the ability to divide. In response to DNA damage (including shortened telomeres) cells either senesce or self-destruct (apoptosis) if the damage cannot be repaired. Organismal senescence is the aging of whole organisms. The term aging has become so commonly equated with senescence that the terms will be used interchangeably in this article.

Aging is generally characterized by the declining ability to respond to stress, increasing homeostatic imbalance and increased risk of disease. Because of this, death is the ultimate consequence of aging. Differences in maximum life span between species correspond to different "rates of aging". For example, inherited differences in the rate of aging make a mouse elderly at 3 years and a human elderly at 90 years. These genetic differences affect a variety of physiological processes, probably including the efficiency of DNA repair, antioxidant enzymes, and rates of free radical production.

Some researchers in gerontology (specifically biogerontologists) regard aging itself as a "disease" that may be curable, although this view is controversial. To those who accept the view, aging is an accumulation of damage to macromolecules, cells, tissues and organs. Advanced biochemical and molecular repair technologies may be able to fix the damage we call aging (thereby curing the disease and greatly extending maximum lifespan). People who hope to extend human maximum life span through science are called life extensionists.

As for philosophically, who knows?
note:this is only death through natural causes.

[keef]

omg. give me some time to digest all these. i have something to contribute too. but i have a genetics test tml. hang on guys! do check back for more discussions. thanks micky, beetle for your views

[keef]

omg. my genetics test was one hell of a paper

hmmm. micky i tink wikipedia has given a rather comprehensive explanation. but somehow, philosophy still doesn't seem to coexist with science

[bluegray]

i think we are alone and we will never know

[bluegray]

maybe we are not alone. maybe we live together and die together - but not at the same moment. when we live - we receive life and cause death at the same moment. because we cannot receive and give at the same moment - we will die sometime.

[lyricen]

We die because life cannot exist without motion and change, and motion and change happens through the movement of cycles; the cycles are generations of becoming, being, and not-being.

[G-Do]

If you're looking to insert teleological reasons into biological contexts, try this one on for size:

As we age, the average number of mutations in each dividing cell of our bodies increases. As our cells become more mutated, our chance of getting a cancer increases. If a man were to keep living beyond, say, one hundred and fifty years, he would be little more than a walking gumbo of tumors, a twisted human form hideously disfigured by cancer upon cancer upon cancer. Genetic programs which age us and eventually lead to our deaths (through organ failure) spare us from this horrible fate.

Happy Halloween.

(Of course, this is all complete nonsense. The teleological fallacy, etc, and the biological reasoning isn't sound either, since genetically programmed aging of glands - such as the mammary gland and prostate - may contribute directly to cancer. It's still a nice Halloween story for grade schooler bio students, though.)