Abstract
From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, most theories in life sciences are characterized by particular conceptions of life. In this paper, we discuss them by analyzing how they have been mobilized by some authors in the studies of specific topics in life science. From Buffon to the theories on the origins of life of the second half of the twentieth century, examining closely the approaches of J.-B. Lamarck, L. Pasteur, C. Darwin and C. Bernard, we will observe how the problems of the nature of the living matter, of spontaneous generation, of molecular dissymmetry, of stop of metabolism and of the origin of life constitute the context of important thoughts on the nature of life.
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Notes
- 1.
Available online on www.buffon.cnrs.fr/ (edited by Pietro Corsi and Thierry Hoquet).
- 2.
About the current work to “reconstruct” life in the laboratory, see Heams on synthetic biology, Chap. 20, this volume. (ed. note).
- 3.
They are uncontainable because “no known body would know how to retain them” (Lamarck 1802: 107).
- 4.
“These other fluids, which are water charged with dissolved gas, or with other tenuous substances, the atmospheric air, which contains water, etc.” (Lamarck 1802: 107).
- 5.
According to the panspermia theory, after its cooling, the Earth was seeded with seeds of life from outer space.
- 6.
See Heams (“Heredity”), Chap. 3, this volume. (ed. note).
- 7.
On the nomological and historical sciences, see Lecointre Chap. 19, this volume. (ed. note).
- 8.
Noncoding parts of the DNA present in the sequence of a gene.
- 9.
Or “transposable elements”. Sequences of DNA which change position in the DNA molecule.
- 10.
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Tirard, S. (2015). Life. In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_10
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