Building of a conceptual profile of "life"

Abstract

This paper 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 domain, 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, 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.