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Life, Mechanism and Purpose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Y. H. Krikorian
Y. H. Krikorian*
Affiliation:
College of the City of New York
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Extract

The determination of the place of life in nature has been a major philosophic issue. Some, in their attempt to show the continuity of nature, have resorted to the reductive method and have argued that the living differ in no significant sense from the non-living, unless it be in their complexity; others, in their desire to emphasize the qualitatively varied aspects of nature, have drifted to disjunctive method and have claimed that there is an unbridgeable gap between the living and the non-living. Yet life in its natural setting presents both continuity with the physical world and a distinctive difference from it. One need neither sunder the continuity in nature nor deny the empirically observable qualitative differences. It is this principle that will guide the present discussion of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1943 , pp. 184 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943

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References

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