Building a profile for the biological concept of life

Abstract

This chapter reports the building of a conceptual profile of life. We took as a starting point the hypothesis that the concept of life is polysemous, showing several possible meanings and, thus, admitting a conceptual profile. We attempted to demarcate the zones that constitute this conceptual profile through a dialogic interplay between theoretical and empirical studies, involving at least three genetic domains: the sociocultural, by means of a review about the concept of life and its history; the ontogenetic, through a compilation of studies about students’ alternative conceptions about life; and the microgenetic domain, by gathering empirical data through questionnaires, answered by biology majors, and interviews based on problem situations with graduate students in the fields of ecology and genetics. Taking into account epistemological and ontological aspects, we identified three zones, representing three levels of understanding of the life concept: “internalist,” including conceptions in which life is understood as a set of inherent processes or properties of living beings; “externalist,” amounting to an understanding of life as something external to and apart from living beings, often seen as something that comes from outside or tends to a goal that is beyond the living being; and “relational,” in which life is conceived as a relationship between entities and/or systems and the definition itself is given in terms of relations.