I am not sure what you mean.

A bean (meaning a healthy, ripe bean ready for sowing) is as much a living thing as a plant is. In fact it is a plant, a real plant, wrapped up in a seed coat. If you cut it open correctly you can see that it has two leaves, a a stem with a bud at the tip, and a root. As for the seed coat, that is protective tissue that gets lost, just as the outer layer of your skin gets worn away when it no longer is needed, only to be replaced by new skin from beneath when necessary, or as the bark of a stem gets replaced as the plant grows.

If you plant it and water it, it will go on growing. I don't know how you can get more alive than that. What else would you demand?

The apple from this point of view is like a branch that contains about ten seeds. The tissue in the apple is dying as it ripens, much like the skin of the bean. Each apple seed is like the bean; it is a whole plant in a seed coat. It is like perhaps ten living plants ready to leave the branch where they grew.

Is that what you wanted to know?

Ask a vegetarian to justify the ethics of eating beans compared to eating apples. From the plant's point of view it's a wholly different level of commitment. Mind you, a chicken would rather you tucked into an egg than a drumstick; I suppose a carrot might prefer you ate a few seeds than its whole root.

Eating human beans is cannibalism and ethically unacceptable in most societies.

Hello João.

Thank you for your friendly reply and please accept my apologies for my delayed response.

You said that you were seeking for another type of answer. I think that the most important thing you have learned is that one cannot be sure that the answer you get is of any value until you have found out what the question should be, and you may not KNOW the answer you should get, but you should UNDERSTAND it before you can ask the right question. (That sounds very solemn of course, but cheer up; hardly anyone remembers that in real life.)

I strongly recommend that you read a short story called:“Ask a foolish question” by Robert Sheckley. You can find it online if you use Google. I think every scientist and philosopher should read it, preferably while still young.

Someone said: “In order to ask a question you must already know most of the answer.” Personally I think that should read: “In order to ask a useful question you must already understand most of the answer.”

You say: “I was thinking about the frontier of a life being and non-life being, once there isn’t just one and objective definition for life being or just life.”

Yes, I agree with that.

You ask “What is life for you?” I think that whatever else life might be, life is a class of process, not a substance. Suppose you have a tardigrade crawling in a drop of water. Is it alive? I think so. Now we freeze-dry the tardigrade. Is it alive now? Arguably not. Is it dead? Arguably not. Suppose we copy its genetic code and store it on a disk. Now we kill every Tardigrade on the planet. Are Tardigrades extinct? Would it make any difference if we ask the same question about elephants? I suppose it would make a difference to the elephants…

“…do you consider a vírus a life being?” It depends on the circumstances and the sense. Usually... not really life...

“Could the planet earth be considerated a life being in a holistic point of view? Have you ever heard about Gaia hypothesis?”

I have, but I do not agree. Gaia does not seem to me to be sufficiently integrated to be a life form. I do not deny that any planet could be “alive”, but I don’t think Gaia is.

Just an opinion...!

Sincerely,

>P.S.: I beg your pardon about my English, but I`m Portuguese!<

I guessed your language because I once had a friend called João! :-)

No pardon needed; We like to meet friends here, and you speak English better than most of us speak Portuguese!

All the best!

Jon