For a biologist, the question of what life is seems capital,
but it could be posed from pure biology or from individuality.
That's true.
The definition of what can be
understood by life is complicated
From the more philosophical, conceptual point of view
there's a certain idea that the
vital phenomenon is associated
to the capability some structures have of being
autonomous from one's environment
An autonomy that remains in time
There's a philosopher I particularly like, Hans Jonas
He studied with Heidegger and has developed
a very peculiar philosophy of life
life as a fundamental principle to
understand the dynamism of matter
He tries to -going against Descartes-
To see the problem, which has to do
with the second part, with human life
Life forces us to separate mind from spirit
As evolution happens, the spirit seems to emerge
it becomes more present as we approach our species
If we look at the history of philosophy we can see
people say there's only spirit in our species
Jonas denies that
In order not to separate what life is from what matter is
 he wants to see a certain stuttering
spirit in the fact that an organism
a simple bacterium -which is not so simple-
has a certain capacity of sensory response
One could say that can't be called
spirit, because it's very mechanical
 but what's curious about the dynamics of life
is that it becomes progressively more complex
until what we call spirit ends up
taking such proportions in our species
that it gains an enourmous transcendence
But it's not something that appears overnight
It can be scientifically ascribed to biological evolution
The only thing we need is a slight conceptual change
to speak about very elementary manifestations of the spirit
from the first moments in which life emerges
That's Jonas's idea
He does that in order to overcome the
antagonism between mind and matter
mind and spirit
In our species -you can see my formation as a
biologist is very present in my line of reasoning-
I would call the manifestations of spirit manifestations of mind
they implode and explode
We are beings which use the mind a lot
and its properties are very clear
With our mind we have been able to put
forward very important transformations
There's a question that's not resolved and it's fascinating
and which I think may be solved at some stage
how can our spirit, in a conscious way, move matter?
I give my body instructions to move the fingers
This is, philosophically speaking, a first magnitude problem
How can something which is, in principle, not material
exert an action on matter?
The brain, an enormous complex net
of interactions between neurons
a certain non-material entity
gives instructions in order to
move something which is material
This is a fascinating problem
But what we cannot say is this only happens with our species
I'll place it again in the context of evolution
Another question is whether we are
more or less aware that these actions
are triggered by a non-material entity
In my book I say the spirit is the interaction of matter
It's quite a strong sentence which
tries to overcome the dichotomy
between mind and matter and to place
everything in an evolutionary context
 The processes of generation of the
superior activities of the brain
particularly the human brain, are a product of evolution
They're not exclusive of our species
We can understand how these complex
categories have come to be
Thought, amorous feelings, many activities
which seem unique to our species
admit a reading in the context of the
dynamics of the life of other beings
which haven't reach the levels of
spirituality we may have reached
but there's a certain continuation
