life and the law of inertia

11.X.MCDXXX

Does life violate Newton's first law of motion (Galileo's law of inertia) or does it merely channel / divide and redirect ancient forces from the beginning of the world.

Although the discussion turns out to be vacuous and circular, there are arguments in favor of both cases - until further more level-headed inquiry.

the wikipedia version of the law will do for now
* An object that is not moving will not move until a net force acts upon it.
* An object that is moving will not change its velocity until a net force acts upon it.

Yet living organisms, for example ourselves, being autonomous, move and change their own velocities not due to external net forces but all by themselves.

the law does not account for the force that moves a living being. it moves itself by its own volition.

The immediate cause of the movement is the actuation of muscle states by nerve signals. Preceding the onset of this process, however, What triggers this actuation?

In our case it is easy to say, thought. In the case of unicellular and other protista, some will cite changes in chemical concentration affecting sequences of stimulus-response mechanisms.

thought. it is here the force concept breaks down or seems to, because the signals originate as response to other sensory signals, none of them explaining the voluntary work done to lift a quadruped or biped up from the ground, and the forces that move their limbs.



But thought is not accountable as a net external force on the human body.

Nowhere in the law of inertia (newton's first law) does it say that a human or a living thing will accelerate itself (ie, change its own velocity).

According to this tiny piece of physics, we should not move at all, unless physically pushed - from the outside. But typically we push ourselves. We spend some energy to exert a force that was not there. We move where no motion would have been predicted by pure physics.

it's likely i'm missing a glaringly obvious detail. So it's better to start with such a criticism. This could be in the words "we spend some energy to exert a force"; so in the long view, one could say energy turned into a force that moved that individual.

this makes us energy transformers. we collect energy, then use it to exert forces that move us as well as other things.

in this sense we are much like, and are literally automobiles.

for energy is stored and converted into force (with much release of hea) to achieve motion - at will.

this sequence of forces can be traced - along the question "but what moved us" - all the way back to the first cell of life. but still, what moved it? still one can trace this back to all the forces that led to the chemical agglomeration of the first proteins and organelles.

so forces dating back billions of years led to life which stores energy and then take it and convert it into force at will whenever it moves itself or something else.

This can only be as useful as the dependence of the 2nd law of motion on it.