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Abstract The Role of Philosophical Intuition for Intelligibility of Life

Is it possible to understand “life” by means of scientific rationality? Is “life” reducible to any other physical/mathematical object? In this article I focus on Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Patočka’s ideas of life and biological evolution, by pointing out their attempts to present “philosophical intuition” as a model of intelligibility of life phenomena that is quite distinct from scientific rationality. As for Bergson and Merleau-Ponty, between “life” and “scientific rationality” one may grasp an unbridgeable gap: none of the existing theories concerning life and biological evolution provide sufficient explanations for the emergence of novelty and randomness intrinsic to evolution (philogenesis/ontogenesis). Ultimately, the “phenotype determination” is the result of an evolutionary history in most parts characterized by a “scientific” indeterminacy. As we shall see, Bergson and Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on ontogenesis and biological individuation, allow us to shed new light on the ontology of nature, by suggesting a new epistemological apparatus for the scientific inquiry on life and its dynamics.