What Makes a Blob Alive?The resolution in which we think we know the world ranges from the sub-atomic to the universe.We perceive the world as a relatively large organism 1 that harbors a thing called consciousness and a concept of self.Many humans feel uneasy and even threatened when exposed to objects that might question their perceived realities.Parts of bodies of complex organisms have been cultured since 1910. 2 The ''production of a new surprising form of life, cellular life in vitro,'' 3 presented a tangible challenge to our concept of self as well as the concept of death.Initially, the existence of the semi-living, a part of a complex living being sustained alive outside and independent from that being, was rarely discussed, mainly due to its confinement to a scientific context.The semi-livings are now out of the laboratories and into an artistic context.This opens up new discourses about the different relationships we might form with these new entities and sheds a different light on our perception of life.The timing is not accidental.We humans have generated enough knowledge to manipulate different levels of life to an extent that requires us to reevaluate our understanding of the concept of life.Back in 1905 in the light of experiments in surgery and embryology, H. G. Wells wrote: ''We overlook only too often the fact that a living being may also be regarded as raw material, as something plastic, something that may be shaped and altered.'' 4He then went on to write the Island of Dr. Moreau, fictionally exploring this concept at the level of the whole organism.The appropriation of parts of complex organisms, sustained and grown outside of the body as ''plastic raw material'' to be ''shaped and altered'' seems like a more palatable version of this concept.In reality it seems that there were more epistemological barriers to the use of living parts of complex organisms then
Catts et al. (Mon,) studied this question.