ALIVE

The philosophy and science of just what it means to be alive.

British academic/researcher Challenger (How To Be Animal, 2017) takes off from, and frequently returns to, Aristotle’s thinking in this wide-ranging, sometimes confounding meditation on theories of what distinguishes life from non-life. For Aristotle, and for Challenger, life resides in the individual organism—whether plant, animal, or other—navigating in a world of other organisms as well as non-living elements and forces. She adopts his term “psyche,” interpreting it as meaning a “goal-directed, self-regulating living body,” and takes off from it to speculate on the existence of a “psychosphere,” “a realm of intention, perception, and responsiveness that overlaps and interacts with the material world.” Dipping into the work of multiple scientists and philosophers, she devotes much of the book to arguing that life and intelligence are by their nature embodied, whether in the simplest of organisms or in human beings, and that thoughts of anything like a soul or consciousness separate from the body are misguided. She also makes a case that artificial intelligence—which she believes ought to be called “artificial obedience”—belongs to the realm of the mechanical and material rather than the living. At times, Challenger seems to have bitten off more than she can chew: A long chapter on the various theories of the origins of life on Earth adds little to her argument and bogs down in a recognition of the “formidable challenges when it comes to considering life’s origins.” However, she is at her best when delving into the intricacies of life as a sequoia tree or a bee or making her readers question their assumptions of life as it is subjectively experienced, rather than attempting a grand synthesis of its meaning.

An ambitious, provocative examination of a slippery topic.