It is widely believed that we might be able produce life out of nonliving
substances if we possessed the relevant knowledge. Thus synthetic biology
is said to be on the way towards artificial life. But this is nonsense: “artificial
life” cannot be thought. The idea that biological organisms could be produced
reflects a misunderstandig of the concept “life”. Life is formally characterized by
the fact that that which in the case of artifacts is three distinct activities – being
something, producing it, and using it – is one. For a living being, to be is to be the
source of its own activity through its own activity. Hence, if there is an activity of
producing distinct from being what is produced – as would have to be the case in
artificial life – what is thus produced is not life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:80309 |
| Date | 03 August 2022 |
| Creators | Rödl, Sebastian |
| Publisher | De Gruyter |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 6 |
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