ORIGIN OF INDIVIDUALS, THE

The book explores the evolution of the machine metaphor in understanding living beings, tracing its development from Descartes to modern views of organisms as robotic entities guided by genetic programming. It critiques this perspective for creating contradictions in biology, suggesting it hinders scientific progress. By analyzing recent molecular biology data, the author proposes a new framework based on cellular Darwinism, emphasizing stochastic differentiation rather than deterministic genetic programming. This perspective has profound philosophical implications, suggesting that while humans may be machines, they operate randomly.