The Category of Life, Mechanistic Reduction, And the Uniqueness of Biology (Critical Essay‪)‬

INTRODUCTION In the Science of Logic Hegel undertakes a critical examination of the category of mechanism, carefully developing every nuance of implicit determinacy suggested in it. For reasons we will see, this development leads us through the demise of mechanism to "chemism" in which a conceptual determinacy that can more properly be characterized as "chemical" supplants the purely mechanistic level of determinacy. Chemism in turn reveals inherent contradictions of its own that make necessary a concept of purposive activity or "teleology." Finally, to the degree that the latter is conceived as "external" purposiveness-viz. as a purposive activity which makes use of a material external and indifferent to it-it still retains a residual mechanistic determinacy and thereby fails to adequately express purposiveness. When such purposiveness is adequately expressed in a determinacy adequate to it, it is life. In this way we are led to the conceptualization of life as a certain kind of purposive self-relation. Difficult as it is, some exposition is necessary in order to present the case that Hegel does in fact demonstrate this development, and that this development has certain implications regarding how we think of living beings vis a vis the mechanisms to which they are not reducible but which they must necessarily presuppose. (2) As with any argument, presenting only its conclusions would not only fail to demonstrate their necessity but also, particularly in this case, would not allow one to see the positive ontological character of life that is implied.