Mechanical conceptions of living nature were the first way for man to confront the vagueness and obscurity of living nature. Driven to their logical conclusion, they meant reducing living nature to the components of dead matter. The purpose of this Undergraduate work is therefore to highlight the clear distinction between living and non-living nature and argue for the non-reducibility of the first to the second. The key question is therefore: what makes something alive? I will answer this question through the prism of Jonases concept of the organism, which represents a counter to the prevailing mechanistic-reductionist flows in biology. Life is defined by internal dynamics, which are primarily related to the formation of the identity of the organism itself. These mechanisms are specific only to living nature, while the identity of dead matter is determined only through the outside, through space and time. To make Jonas's concept of the organism as clear as possible, there will be given an additional emphasis on the backround of its formation.
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