Life Forms: A Keyword Entry

• DOI: 10.1525/rep.2010.112.1.27
• Publication Date: 2010-10-18T17:46:54Z
• Authors: Stefan Helmreich; Sophia Roosth
• Keywords: 0601 history and archaeology; 06 humanities and the arts; 300

We deliver a "keyword" account of the term life form as it has been used in natural philosophy and biology over last two hundred years, beginning with its appearance German Lebensform. argue that has, since earliest enunciations, pointed to space possibility within which might take shape, but way is imagined theorized transformed substantially; originated referring idealized, aesthetic possibilities, then describe biogeographic evolutionary potentialities, today, age synthetic astrobiology, come signal conjectural future possibilities.