Environmental Ethics

Author(s): S M Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 89

indestructibility, indivisibility, piety, supreme knowledge, happiness and many such characteristics to it which are questionable and do not stand the test of scientific scrutiny. Many organisms such as amoeba etc. can be cut and divided in two and both survive as two separate organisms. This would mean that soul can be divided in two or more similar complete entities. Likewise male and female genetic material i.e. sperm and ovum are both living beings i.e. each possessing individual soul and when they fuse to make one individual entity human, animal, insect etc. the two souls become one. This is incompatible to the very fundamental attributes of soul itself as conceptualised by soul theorists themselves. All life forms have a certain span of life. Soul theorists also agree that soul resides in a particular body and leaves after a specific span. But spermatozoa, ovum, blood and live tissues can be stored for prolonged periods at sub zero temperatures more than their normal span without losing their quality called life. According to Noble laureate Illya Prigogine, the self organisation as in living beings also occurs in certain chemical systems called "dissipate structures" which maintain and develop structure by breaking down other structures in process of metabolism and exhibit most of the phenomena of characteristics of life i.e. self renewal, adaptation, evolution and even primitive mental process. This system represent a link between animate and inanimate matter and the only difference is that they do not produce cells and do not reproduce and are therefore not considered life form. Jean Baptiste, Lamrarck Gregory Batson proposed the theory that evolution of all living beings is from earlier simpler forms in conducive environment. The property called life and consciousness might have evolved in organic molecules in evolutionary process. Scientists have created synthetic life forms e.g. synthetic polio virus and trying to create evolutionary cycle through random stringing of nucleotides to form RNA molecules and specialized ribozymes. These when mixed with clay cell prototypes begin to grow
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