Abstract

Artefacts are made whereas living entities generate themselves: the extent to which this distinction seems obvious is the extent to which it tends to transform the relation between living entities on the one hand and artefacts on the other into a contradiction, a tendency which in consequence conceals the intricate dialectics between φύσις and τέχνη.The aim of this paper is to develop the dialectical relations between life - in terms of living entities - and artefacts from a constructivist point of view. The explication of the functionalistic structure of an Aristotelian concept leads to a constructivist reconstruction of the epistemic relation between living entities and artefacts on the one hand and living entities and organisms on the other hand. The resulting argumentation avoids some restrictions of Aristotelian approaches as well as of their modern counterpart