Idealism and Science of Life: An Intersection Between Philosophy and Biology

While scrutinizing the interchange between philosophy and the sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about the origins of life, this paper shows how the commonality of research among different disciplines can lead to moments of great discovery and theoretical advancement. In those years, in fact, a new scientific form of knowledge is born under the name of biology, while also one of the most important philosophical movements of modern history, German idealism, flourishes. The general aim of this paper is to emphasize the richness of the dialogue between different kinds of knowledge, namely between the so-called sciences of nature and the sciences of the mind