The Thesis

This chapter presents the thesis that living things and nonliving things have distinct forms of phenomenological appearance, particularly regarding their boundaries: relations between inside and outside, core and property, body and surroundings. The distinction between “inner” core and “outer” properties characterizes both living and nonliving things, but living things exhibit a special relation between these aspects, such that the boundary between them is a property of the living thing itself. This position resolves a dispute between Hans Driesch and Wolfgang Köhler about the characteristic gestalt or form of living things in comparison with the nonliving. The properties that are taken to define living things have both empirical and a priori components and may be examined for both natural-scientific and explanatory and for phenomenological and philosophical purposes. The inquiry that will occupy the remainder of the book is an attempt to test and develop the thesis of the distinctive boundary structure of living things by deriving properties that are traditionally considered essential characteristics of life, such as metabolism, heredity, and aging—the “organic modals”—from the proposed boundary structure and linking the derived results to what is known about living things.