Living creatures, humankind, and the history of who we are

Abstract

Breathing Life into Biology is a brave attempt to do science while wearing its values on its sleeves. It is written under the commitment that life is intrinsically valuable, and its value has to be taken seriously in doing biology. Stewart defends a conception of life in which every living organism has a subjective point of view from which it makes sense of the world. Under this conception and the commitment that life is valuable in itself, the book presents the story of life from its origin and our history as humankind. However, the book is more successful in presenting the former than the latter. Yet Stewart’s conception of enaction opens the possibility for cognitive science and his conception of what makes us human enables us to embrace the histories and the forms of life of those who have been systematically silenced.