DO WE NEED NEW APPROACHES TO THE DEFINITION OF BIOLOLGICAL ESSENCE?
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Karpin, Anton Igorevich Jelnin
Surgut State University, 6284121, Surgut, Lenin av
Keywords: химическая основа жизни, размножение, сложность, открытая каталитическая система, диалектическое противоречие, диалектическое отрицание, самосохранение, адаптация, аутопоэзис, редукционизм, life, chemical basis of life, reproduction, complexity, open catalytic system, dialectical contradiction, dialectical negation, self-preservation, adaptation, autopoesis, reductionism
Abstract
The article raises the problem of the need to revise concepts of the essence of life. The question should be solved not just by listing attributes, but by revealing a certain integral mechanism. Moreover, such central attribute of life as reproduction actually is already a property of complex chemical catalytic systems. The chemical and the biological, being integrated in the living matter, are not the same and differ as a «lower» (less complex) level and a «higher» (more complex) one. The relation between these levels is dialectical and implies a mechanism of negating the chemical in order to integrate it and make it a basis of life. The example of reproduction shows that life aims largely to control this process and regulate it at different levels, which both morphological progress and functioning of populations and ecosystems can be partly associated with. Thus, not reproduction itself but the unity of reproduction and mechanisms of its regulation can generate such integral life phenomenon as self-preservation. The level structure of life is largely determined by the fact that every higher level presupposes restraining replication at the lower one. This may be associated with both the limited capacity of environment and its resources and the functioning of «finely-tuned» biological structures and differentiation processes, which do not involve an unlimited growth of the number of elements.
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