Duration
31 Aug 2026 - 04 Sep 2026
Six basic approaches can be identified in attempts to define living matter: (i) Aristotle's intuition of life as animation, i.e., a fundamental and irreducible feature of the natural world, (ii) Descartes' view of life as a mechanism, (iii) Kant's perspective of life as organization, (iv) Darwin's revolutionary concept of life as variation and evolutionary selection, (v) Gánti's vision of life as a chemoton (i.e., chemical automaton) which may be seen as a sublimation of the Descartian, Kantian, and (indirectly) Darwinian views, and (vi) the idea that life is an emergence, meaning an emergent property of certain specific complex systems.
The main goal of the Course is to offer a deeper understanding of living matter, its presumed organic origin, and possible biological destiny. The Organizer will use the fact that such a goal is hampered by the initial difficulty (or impossibility) of achieving the final philosophical definition of life to present challenging lectures and initiate lively debate. Thus, we intentionally start with the difficult question of What Life Is? hoping not so much to converge on an answer but to foster a thorough and rewarding exploration. The importance of this discourse transcends philosophy and theoretical biology. Attempts to de novo synthesize simple living systems as chemical super-systems are underway. Astrobiological research programs cannot circumvent this bold topic either …
