Luca Illetterati (Università di Padova) – “Machines and Organisms: An Historical and Conceptual Thought”

Abstract. Martin Heidegger wrote that the notion of organism is a typical modern notion and it is so, because it is a mechanical-technical notion. The assertion might sound strange to our (modern) ears, because from the beginning of the 19th century what is organic is thought as the opposite of what is simply a machine. In my talk I want to show in what sense the heideggerian assertion is true from an historical point of view as well from a conceptual perspective.