Q. Sorry to sound nitpicky but there are a few problems I find with that statement. Firstly osmosis is actually governed by the law of physics. There is some thermodynamics that explains it. Secondly, that “active transport flouts physics”. Active transport requires other physiological processes that are governed by the law of chemistry which if you look deep into it is physics. It is not something outside the laws of science.
A. Your testing my bio and physics here!
Would it be more agreeable if I phrased it as: both osmosis and active transport happen in plants but not in chemicals because plants have something that mere chemicals do not: life. And because of that plants (or plant cells) can have recourse to higher laws of nature (that are still scientific) that chemicals cannot. In other words, plants, unlike chemicals, can bend the laws of physics and chemistry by having recourse to the higher laws of biology. But the laws of all three (physics, chemistry and biology) are indeed laws of science.
Q. Sounds more agreeable. They are all controlled by laws of science yes…
A. In that case, moving on from where we left off earlier…
3. There is nothing you can do to get a thing to jump from one level of being to a higher level of being. Basically we haven't discovered how to make chemicals into plants or plants into animals or animals into humans.
4. But you can get a thing to slide from a higher level of being to a lower level of being – man for example. As a child – before the age of reason – he behaves much like an animal, like a little gorilla. And at that stage obeys all the laws of nature that animals obey; and as the baby grows it develops reason, conscience and free will. But even as a grown adult, in an accident he could lose his higher faculties successively until what is left is what we in fact call a "vegetable" i.e. a plant. And at that juncture, he follows all laws that plants follow. And when even those plant faculties are lost (effectively when life is lost), then the corpse that is left follows all the laws that chemicals and elements follow.
How is all this related to the discussion on the soul?
Firstly to appreciate that the soul or life-force of man is more complex than that of a plant if only because it carries out more intricate and complex functions like making choices that plants do not.
Secondly, to realise that the soul of a human in a manner of speaking is like the electrification of an expansive building complex that is done in several phases; such that even with one phase down, other phases can continue operating as normal. So too, in the soul of a human, higher or lower faculties can be disabled with the other faculties or phases operating as normal.
From the perspective of philosophy therefore, a person dies when body and soul are separated – when the soul leaves the body. I usually imagine this as that situation where the body is so racked and unresponsive due to some fatal injury or mortal illness that the soul can no longer keep a grip on it.
Q. On the point of human faculties: if the soul is what is the centre of our consciousness, is it then true that in the case of someone with brain-damage, a part of the soul was destroyed? Brain damage can severely compromise the ability to make choices etc.
A. Nope. For 2 reasons I can think of:
1. The soul is not material, for which reason it has no parts that can be integrated like parts in a car or cells in a body. And because it can't be integrated it can't dis-integrate; because it has no parts, it can't be pulled a-part. Effectively you can't destroy it. It's like trying to destroy energy.
2. Brain-damage can compromise making choices as does intoxication etc. not because it damages the soul but because it interrupts the communication between soul and body just like in a table lamp that fails to work not because there is no electricity, but because the bulb is blown or the power cable is broken.
Happy New Year!
31st Dec 2018