The emergence of life in the universe. An approach to the emergence of complexity from an interdisciplinary point of view.

The general interest of this research focuses on the conceptual frameworks used to explain the appearance of life in the universe and its peculiar character with respect to the subject of which physicists are concerned. 

The most current works in this regard, such as those of Stuart Kauffman, Alicia Juarrero, Terrence Deacon, Álvaro Moreno, Jeremy England, Maturana and Varela, etc., are based on epistemic and ontological assumptions (sometimes explicit and sometimes not) that require an analysis with a double purpose: to alert us to possible biases and limitations in their explanations and to provide conceptual extensions that situate old problems that were considered unsolvable now as operable and workable problems. 

The mechanistic paradigm inaugurated with Cartesian physics and Laplace's image of the scientific knowledge of the universe as a whole have dominated 20th century biology. However, physics, considered the paradigmatic science that biology should resemble, seems to have serious problems with such mechanistic schemes. The hypothesis of work of this research is that the conceptual broadening of the notion of cause and the acceptance of causal plurality is not only compatible with the so-called hard sciences, but will also make possible explanations that do not evade the most characteristic features of the phenomenology of the living, such as its teleological-formal functioning. 

Despite the return to an Aristotelian causal ontology that we could call classical, a dialogue with science and more contemporary proposals of scientists and philosophers is fundamental for this work . I consider especially interesting for the discussion the notions of explanation, reduction, subject and causes.

Directors of thesis
 

José Ignacio Murillo
jimurillo@unav.es