Introduction

Abstract

The notion that living systems, including human individuals, cultures and societies, are the outcome of the physical properties of matter, is at least as old as empirical science itself. To be sure, in the history of science and philosophy one rarely finds mechanistic, or physicalistic, views of the organic world which, in simple-minded manners, held no more than the machine-like nature of organisms. These views were rather based on elaborate epistemologies and systematics of science, with classical physics and mechanics conceived of as being paradigmatic of all human inquiry. In any case, efforts to systematise science and epistemology on the basis of the methods and laws of physics do not only characterise modern scientific and philosophical positivism and materialism. Attempts in this direction were already carried out at great length and sophistication in Thomas Hobbes’ Elementa Philosophiae and Leviathan, to recall to just one of the classical examples.