From conceptual plurality to School consensus: circulation and stabilization of the concept of “Life” in light of Fleck’s epistemology
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the definition of life as a plural problem in biology and as stabilized content in biology teaching. In light of Fleck's epistemology, we understand definitions as scientific facts situated in collectives and styles of thinking, and describe the traffic between esoteric and exoteric circles. We reconstruct five styles that underpin canonical characterizations of life: evolutionary-historical, physical-chemical, systemic-organizational, thermodynamic self-organization and complexity, and metatheoretical-operational. We argue that plurality is operational in the esoteric, but tends to be erased in circulation through simplification, selection, and reordering, producing didactic consensus and apodictic statements. Finally, we indicate implications for teaching and teacher training: making the limits of lists explicit, reintroducing history and controlled controversies, and using borderline cases to teach life as a controversial and fertile concept for socio-scientific questions. The study is theoretical-epistemological, based on the systematization of canonical and educational literature, without claiming empirical exhaustiveness in this analytical section