A Whiteheadian approach to the divide between organisms and machines

The essay takes a critical stance towards the widespread thesis that life is computable or
even reproducible on a medium other than a biological body. The insights of some opponents of that
thesis were somehow anticipated by Whitehead in his metaphysical works, and the essay is intended to
stress the relevance of Whitehead’s processual ontology to the debate on artificial life. Some of
Whitehead’s notions, such as the mental pole and the living person, help significantly to account for
the divide between organisms and machines. Two distinctive characteristics of organisms are
especially analyzed by the essay: their ontogenetic development and their mental faculties.