Talk:Protoplasm

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What is a protoplasm?

Protoplasm:

The viscid, translucent, polyphasic colloid with water as the continuous phase that makes up the essential material of all plant and animal cells. It is composed mainly of nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and inorganic salts. The protoplasm surrounding the nucleus is known as the cytoplasm and that composing the nucleus is the nucleoplasm

what is protoplasm??
''I'm wondering what protoplasm is for my science project!?!

Please reply back!!Not!!''Italic text

Removed a section on 19th century views of protoplasm.
I removed the following, which was first added by Diza almost two years ago:


 * Charles Darwin and his 19th century contemporaries viewed "protoplasm" as the sole content of a cell; in other words, cells were nothing but simple blobs composed of "proto-plasm," a substance that had the ability of self replication. This simplified view of cell biology circumvented the problem of the origin of life that Darwin and others struggled with.

The nucleus was discovered in 1801, before Darwin was even born. Views on the origin of life are irrelevant to the theory of evolution (The Origin of Species ends with a bit about "life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one"). There's no reason to say that the origin of life problem was "circumvented" by any particular view of cellular biology that existed at the time.


 * However, that problem was later introduced in the 1950s when the complex molecular structure of DNA was discovered with following research into the complex biochemistry of living things.

This is faintly redolent of Michael Behe's argument that the complexity of biochemistry disproves the theory of evolution, and it's not relevant to this article. grendel|khan 16:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Much like other proto-biological scientists of that time, Darwin was unaware of the cell's innter constructs, or the nucleus function. Being able to see it under a microscope, did not lead researchers of that time to even hypothesis about it's being the sole carrier of the hereditary information. (This was first postulates What is Life? (Schrödinger) 80 years later)
 * Darwin himself struggled with the possible ramifications of his book for almost 30 years before publishing, some of it social (grandad being a monkey) and some of it scientific, id est - the elevation of the meta-physical vita force to the process of protogenesis, and the cell's seemingly mysterious ability to self replicate. This problem was solve about 90 years after publication by Watson and Crick.
 * I'm reverting and clarifying this section., please feel free to add more clarifications if you deem them necessary. Thank you.-- Procrastinating@ talk2me 11:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ha?
A sentence says "It is a general term of the Cytoplasm (cell membrane)".

What does this mean? Maybe I'm not getting it, but it seems to be saying that the cytoplasm is the cell membrane? Wawawemn (talk) 00:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

von Mohl's words?
To quote the article "... used in 1846 by Hugo von Mohl to describe the "tough, slimy, granular, semi-fluid" substance within plant cells". In what sense can protoplasm be described as "tough"? That is a highly inappropriate word to associate with a highly mobile semi-fluid substance. The quotes seem to imply that vonMohl himself used these words, but he would have been writing in German. What were the German words, and what are the nuances of their meaning? Plantsurfer (talk) 12:01, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

maybe he meant by "tough" that it is dense, if compared to water; it has some structure yet it is still fluid-like, or jelly-like. 94.21.25.82 (talk) 09:38, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

protoplasm - an obsolete (former)scientific term
According to George C. Williams (description from the book's cover: "taught for three decades at New York State University, Ecologist of the Year in USA in 1989") the idea of protoplasm was used to support the traditional belief of the body (of the deceased) being somehow the Person her/himself even after death (sounds like a kind of idea of "material soul" or "soul-material"). Quote: I translated it from the Hungarian edition, so it may not be identical to the English original, from chapter 9: Philosopc Implications, sub-chapter:Further ethical misbeliefs) "there is continuous change of matter in the cell, but the protoplasm was assumed to stay permanent for the whole life, while supervising the exchange of matter in the cell." Thus the protoplasm was thought of as the unchanging "self" of the material body.

(The Pony Fish's Glow, 1997 George C. Williams, "Basic Books. A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, Inc"; Hungarian edition (with added subtitle: Plan and Aim in Nature - "Terv és cél a természetben"): ISBN 963 9069 07 8 / ISSN 1218 4500)

So according to this, protoplasm is an obsolate scientific term like the term of aether (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories) in physics. I don't know however whether the term protoplasm is in use in a more generic or other meaning in today's biology. 94.21.25.82 (talk) 10:16, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

He also mentions a source: Garrett Hardin, "The meaninglessness of the word protoplasm" in Scientific Monthly 82 (1956):112-12.94.21.25.82 (talk) 13:00, 4 October 2014 (UTC)