The virus and the concept of life in times of pandemic

Abstract

The pandemic of covid-19 (caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus) has victimized millions of people worldwide, generating discussions on various aspects. In the scope of the philosophy of biology and in biology, the debate about the concept of life has always been a challenge, since the operational concepts used in biology have not always taken into account its complexity, being possible still today to conceptualize vital processes, but hardly life itself. The virus, due to its mandatory parasitic constitution, besides not being integrated into cell theory, opens a range of discussions because it is situated on the life/non-life frontier. The virus remains inert outside the host cell, but is active when in a parasitic relationship with the host, and can lead it to death. The aim of this article is to discuss the notion of life in the light of replicators selection, analyzing the genetic information as a universalizing attribute of organisms, and from this discussion, to enable, through philosophical analysis, contributions towards a concept of life in biology. We conclude virus cannot be excluded from natural evolutionary process, since it shares genetic information. We also should consider its origins coming from the RNA world, also corroborating the replication of genetic information, common in the living world. Moreover, the virus organizes itself symbiotically as against intrinsic and emerging properties of vital processes, which causes us to conclude the operational criteria does not embrace viruses as living beings, while the selection of replicators does.