Biophysics: Life and Living Systems

Biophysics encompasses so many parts of other disciplines of science, and I like how the definition of biophysics seems to change depending on what it's trying to describe. Biology is the study of living systems, and so this week we covered:

- alternative ideas on the origins of life on earth

- what it means to be alive vs. dead

- whether clinically brain dead patients are aware/can communicate

- whether we ought to expect a mass extinction soonish

- discussion on the mad tetris skills of mother nature when packing in DNA

Judging from this week's readings, I'd conclude that biophysics means biology and physics and all that entails...with a healthy dose of ethics, alternative ideas, and how to see things from different perspectives. Curiosity. Compassion. Connectedness. Biophysics feels like the best of what science has to offer.

This body I ride around in sure feels like a living system - it gets worn down and tired, it demands constant feeding and watering, it loves to move and stretch and communicate with other systems, it needs regular rest, it excretes and it evolves. It changes in ways that spur growth, it feels emotion, it is self-aware (sometimes), it craves and is disgusted. Since the definition for living systems is different depending who I ask, I'm just going to assume I'm a living system until I find overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I can live with that.

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