I agree completely! When i teach the concept of Biodiversity to my classes it quickly spirals to other topics. Everything is related.
I really like some of Christopher Alexander (the architect) big ideas on the topic. He doesn't really capture them in a way that is rigorous or quite how a scientist would frame things but I think his idea of life being being a property of the arrangement of things in space that can be either more or less depending on the pattern of that arrangement is actually a pretty deep idea. He lists a series of architectural patterns found in architecture that feels alive such as imperfect repetition, detail at different scales, deep interlock between adjacent regions (not a simple binary border etc...), and they are described as an artist would in vague ways but I while that can be infuriating from the standpoint of a scientist I also think it is interesting to ponder precisely because he isn't really pretending to know the answer, he knows he is an architect attempting to crudely gesture at science and I kind of find it fascinating. What is the architecture of life? Not the engineering, not how each part of the nuts and bolts of life work... but rather given the same identical set of starting elements, what arrangement of them creates the most fertile environment for new systems to arise? What is the shape and form of living systems? You can see one example of it in the shapes mold makes to spread across petri dishes and how it mirrors the patterns of how cities grow, but I think a rigorous and precise language to describe diversity and the "aliveness" of something or at least the fertileness for something alive to spontaneously form is possible...
sorry for the rant lol
A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.
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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.
Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...
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