An Exploration of the Concept of Life in Biology and Ṣadrian Theosophy

The nature of life has obsessed the philosophers and scientists for long. One of the sciences that has a very close relationship with the concept of life is biology. Biology uses two approaches to address the concept of life: the list-oriented and the science-oriented. In the list-oriented approach, the definite distinction between living and non-living beings is accepted and different lists of the features of the livening beings are provided. In the science-oriented approach, which is a better way to achieve the concept of life, the aim is to define life within a network of existing concepts of a specific field of science. In transcendental theosophy, life is viewed as a type of existence, and by the consideration of the being and life as concomitant, the life hierarchy is equaled to the existence hierarchy, and no distinct line can be drawn between living and non-living things. In this article we try to answer the question that if science and philosophy have any relationship or similarity in the exploration of the concept of life. The findings of the study demonstrate that although the question of life is investigated in philosophy as a transcendental issue and in biology as a material one, a general-specific relationship can be made between science and philosophy in defining the concept of life in the natural world domain.