“Is There a Real Boundary between Living Beings and Non-Living Beings? From Ontological Reductionism to Methodological Pluralism”
The question of the origin of life and the mechanism and conditions that permitted its beginning and the diversity and complexity of species, implies to answer in advance how we can distinguish between living being and non-living being. I will devote this paper to this question, and in particular I will try to answer whether living beings can be reduced to the laws of non living-being, which is to ask whether the reality of life can be reduced to the reality of non living being, or whether the laws of life can be reduced to the laws of the non-living.
I will argue that to identify the boundaries between living being and non-living being implies to define what we understand for the notion of life; and that supposes to apply an heterogeneous physics to explain why the natural structures are maintaining an stability in a context that is tending to an instability, but according to patterns. Moreover, to explain what is a living being, implies also to explain how is possible for the living being to communicate their differences from one generation to another generation, as a combination between diversity and order. Furthermore, I will argue that my evaluation of the limits of an ontological or a methodological reductionism to study living beings implies an interdisciplinary approach and supposes specific criteria to distinguish the boundaries between living being and non-living being.