Abstract

The philosophical foundations of the theory of molecular self-organization (TMS) are reconstructed and compared with the explicit methodological statements made by occasions by its author(s). Special attention is paid to those philosophical fundamentals of TMS which can turn out helpful in answering the question evoking vivid discussions in the philosophy of nature of the recent decades: whether it is possible to search for a physico-chemical explanation of the genesis of life and at the same time defend its specific character. In other words: do the latest findings in self-organization of prebiological molecules allow to overcome the traditional disjunction “either physics or evolution” and to replace it with the conjunction “physics and evolution”?