How do you tell something that is a "technology" or manufactured from something that is natural. We are moving down the path of genetic engineering at a rapid pace, 1000 years from now we will have "engineered" organisms that will contitute a designed technology. If someone found examples of this technology millions of years after we are gone, how could they distinguish it from natural lifeforms?
2007-01-13 08:07:26 · 3 answers · asked by Zefram 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
How can you tell "natural" from "manufactured" or "designed"?
2007-01-13 08:23:55 · update #1
That's a very good question.
The convention is that those things that have not been manipulated by humans are nature and the rest are technology, but the boundary is very blurred, though. So, we usually think about science as the source and prove of technology, that is, rational thinking when applied to reality in order to make a function. However, we have to know before the origin of the changes to recognise it as either one or the other.
This is the reason why, as we don't have any witness of the Pascua Island's big Moais building, some pseudo-scienctists doubt human intervention, for example.
2007-01-13 08:26:31 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If at that time we are gone, and the synthetic organisms remain and thrive on Earth, then they will constitute as part of natural lifeforms, because they adapted to their surrounding ecology and are living independently of our influence.
2007-01-13 08:11:55 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well animals that have evolved on their own have flaws - our appendix, the design of our eyes, the vas deferens detour - if we were designed we were designed by a moron.
What are you actually asking?
2007-01-13 08:19:12 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋