SpecialityProfessor Emeritus ETH, Zurich. CH

What is Life from a Systemic perspectiveOne way to give an answer to the question "what is life" is to consider the life of an organism as a complex system and to see the various components of a living organism in a non-linear relation with each other. Accordingly, it is the integration of the components with each other in a whole unity which gives the character of life, while no single component taken in isolation gives the notion of life. Also, life cannot be localized in a single spot or single part of the system. Life is the whole unity, be a single cell or an elephant. And after this general overview, in order to give a more detailed answer to the question "what is life ", one should consider the work by Maturana and Varela, the two biologist/philosophers from Chile, who coined the notion of autopoiesis. This concept will be defined and discussed more thoroughly. To this aim, a couple of examples will be given based on the systemic approach, which will be relevant also to take into consideration the environment, as there is no life without environment. And this bears to the consequent notion of cognition, to arrive finally at a dimension in which the life of an organism must be considered together with its environment, the stringent relation between these two elements being given by cognition itself.