Anabiotic life persists at a barely perceptible metabolic rate rather than truly ceasing

Evidence

After 350 years of lively debate and experimentation, it is generally agreed that life does not cease in anabiotic organisms, but continues at a barely perceptible rate. Sophisticated technologies are required to document the infinitesimal rate of metabolism, which permits life to be suspended indefinitely. The process that allows these beings to hover at the boundary between life and death is still a profound mystery that is continually played out in the mosses beneath our feet. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 274

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The resolution of the 350-year debate — that life does not stop but slows to near-nonexistence, and we still cannot explain the water-triggered revival — is a paradigm story about scientific categories meeting their limits.
• XREF: The final image of the mystery enacted ‘in the mosses beneath our feet’ is the book’s observational method distilled: grand questions available in the overlooked. — connects to: Mosses survive desiccation that would kill vascular plants by tolerating full drying — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 175; The living-dead relationship parallels cells within a whole organism; Consciousness sustains its own being rather than being sustained by it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 304 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The living-dead relationship parallels cells within a whole organism #complicates (0.72)
• Consciousness sustains its own being rather than being sustained by it. #qualifies (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 304
• Only death is an image of undistorted, not-hypostasized life #complicates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 88
• An oasis sustains life only through constant exchange and movement #exemplifies (0.70) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 240