The concept of organism in a hierarchical and systemic approach to biology

Abstract

Some authors have maintained that the concept of organism has lost, generally speaking, its role in Biology, due to the increasing emphasis on molecular aspects and the fact that the Darwinian evolutionary biology for a long time has not ascribed a clear explanatory role to the organism in its conceptual structure. However, the concept of organism can be regarded as being fundamental to the demarcation of Biology as an autonomous science, with its own research object. Seeking to contribute to the debate on the concept of organism, we discuss in this work how the organism can be conceived in a hierarchical and systemic approach to Biology, as an autonomous unit with the capacity of agency, collectively and evolutionarily constructed, and possessing properties that emerge at the organic level.