Life and Mineralization

We all recognize living creatures when we see them. Animals and people move independently with respect to their environment. Plants and trees might be a bit more difficult to spot quickly on some occasions since they are usually anchored to the ground and move slowly in comparison to animals and people. Rocks in turn are also easy to spot because they don’t move in any way under their own volition.

We’ve already noted that matter can be created and transformed by living beings. We find created inert matter floating around in house dust composed primarily of human skin and insects. We also find it in sea shells, deer antlers, petrified wood, seed shells, animal bones, etc. Each of these types of material remains grew from different types of living beings.

If we consider transformations not directly created from a living body but through a living body, the possibilities become far greater. All man-made houses, buildings, roads, pollution, artifacts of any kind could then be considered transformations of dead matter by life. In fact, human transformations of the world could be considered to be some of the most obviously visible effects of life on the planet.