A concept of life as an emergent property, originating from the interaction of two speci c interpretations of biological individuality and entropy will be discussed in this thesis. Biological...Show moreA concept of life as an emergent property, originating from the interaction of two speci c interpretations of biological individuality and entropy will be discussed in this thesis. Biological individuality will be shown to be a speci c member of the category of individuality and a notion best interpreted as a relative concept which is hierarchically structured by interrelated nested entities. A speci c interpretation of entropy will be described as a statistical notion in which entropy is able to locally increase order as a stable dynamic kinetic state in a closed system. The rise of complex organization will be something that can be explained scienti cally but is interpreted as a predominant emergentist property. In this thesis, I argue that life emerges as a property rising from within the organization of a compartmentalized entity that is able to locally decrease its entropy due to a self-replicating autocatalytic web that jumped into existence. Biological individuality and entropy both relate to a base level of complexity and start to meet at the lowest level of organization. I argue that living biological individuals are not substrate neutral implying life in silico will always be fundamentally di erent from biological life.Show less
