I’m picking up from the same lecture course I was looking at from Derrida on concepts and metaphors, this time beginning a series on Life.

If DNA is information like a text that is transmitted and deciphered without being “understood” as we typically talk about texts and meanings constructed hermeneutically, then is Derrida right that there is a more fundamental level that texts operate at (if DNA can be seen as a text) prior to hermeneutics and the spoken word?

Yes, the analogy of DNA as a “text” strongly supports Derrida’s argument that textuality—in his expanded, non-anthropocentric sense—operates at a more fundamental level than hermeneutics (interpretive understanding) or the spoken word.  Derrida’s critique of logocentrism and phonocentrism (the privileging of speech as the site of presence, meaning, and truth) leads him to propose arche-writing (or originary writing): a generalized play of traces, differences, and deferrals (différance) that precedes and conditions both speech and writing in the narrow sense.

Arche-writing is not literal inscription but the structural condition of any signification: a system of differences without origin, presence, or transcendental signified. Meaning is always deferred and contextual, never fully present. This extends to his famous claim “il n’y a pas de hors-texte” (there is nothing outside the text)—reality itself is always already caught in chains of signification.

DNA fits this framework remarkably well. It is a linear sequence of nucleotides (A, T, C, G) that functions as a code: the “meaning” (protein synthesis, traits) emerges from differences between bases, their order, and context-dependent expression. The cellular machinery “reads” it through transcription and translation—a mechanical, automatic process without consciousness, intention, authorial presence, or hermeneutic circle. There is no speaking subject, no voice, no fusion of horizons as in Gadamerian hermeneutics. The code is deciphered and actualized without “understanding” in the human sense; it is pure iterability and differential play.

Derrida himself engaged this territory in his 1975–76 seminar La vie la mort that I am currently looking at, where he deconstructs the cybernetic-biological notion of the “genetic programme” (drawing on François Jacob’s The Logic of Life). Jacob describes DNA as a “nucleic-acid text” carrying “instructions” and “messages.” Derrida reads this through différance: the programme is not a fixed, self-present plan (a logos) but a differential, deferred process. The genetic “writing” is non-phonetic and non-intentional—it operates before any logos or voice. He argues that appealing to such “writing” in genetics “had… to imply and provoke an entire deconstruction of the logocentric machine.”

In this sense, DNA exemplifies arche-writing: a trace-structure at the cellular level that precedes consciousness, speech, and hermeneutic interpretation. Secondary scholarship reinforces the connection. The genetic code is treated as a system of signifiers (nucleotide sequences) whose “signifieds” (phenotypes) are endlessly deferred, contextual, and subject to mutation/recombination—mirroring Derrida’s “field of infinite substitutions” without a center.

Evolution itself has been framed as a kind of “reading” or interpretation of the genetic text, extending textuality into biology prior to human meaning-making. The analogy is not perfect—DNA lacks the cultural-historical iterability Derrida emphasizes in human texts—but it powerfully illustrates his core claim: signification (textuality) is not secondary to speech or conscious understanding. It is originary, material, and differential. DNA shows this structure at work in “nature” itself, before hermeneutics or phonocentrism. In that sense, Derrida is right: there is indeed a more fundamental level at which “texts” (systems of difference) operate, one that precedes and makes possible the domains of speech and interpretive meaning:

And that is why the notion of the text imposes itself on the science of the living, and not only imposes itself more than the notion of spoken language (that goes without saying, since there is no voice or words in genetic programs) but (and this goes less without saying for biologists such as Jacob and others) imposes itself even more than the notion of message, information, or communication.  There are, to be sure, message, information, and communication effects, but only on the condition that these are, in the final analysis, textual, that is to say, that the message, the communication, or the information never transmits, never emits, never communicates, never informs any content that is not itself of the order of message, information, or communication, that is not itself, therefore, a trace or a gramme. Information does not inform one of something, communication does not communicate something, the message does not emit something that is not in itself already a message, a communication, or a piece of information. The message emits a message: that seems to be a tautology, but it nonetheless runs contrary to what seems to be common sense. The message does not transmit something, it says nothing, it communicates nothing: what it transmits has the same structure as itself, that is to say, it is a message, and it is this transmitted message that is going to allow one to decipher or to translate the emitting message, which thus implies the absence of anything at all outside the message, outside information, outside communication. It is because of this that we must specify here [159] that the words communication, information, and message are intratextual and operate only on the condition of the text, contrary to what they ordinarily lead us to think, namely, that they communicate, inform, or emit something. Naturally, this textual self-reference, this closing upon itself of a text that refers only to text, has nothing tautological or autistic about it. On the contrary. It is because alterity is there irreducible that there is only text; it is because no term, no element, is itself sufficient or even has an effect, referring as it always does to the other and never to itself, that there is text; and it is because the whole that text is cannot close upon itself that there is only text, and that what is called the “general” text (an obviously dangerous and merely polemical expression) is neither a whole nor a totality: it can neither comprehend itself nor be itself comprehended. But it can be written and read, which is something else. Is this not the situation—a text without external reference, completely outside because without any other reference than a text remarking a text—is this not, in the end, the situation of the text of biogenetics, … It is on this condition that translation or deciphering (a deciphering that is neither objective, in the traditional sense of this term, nor subjective, neither a hermeneutics of meaning nor an unveiling [160] of truth), it is on this condition that intra-textual deciphering is possible in this textual science without extra-textual reference, etc. (Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 118-119). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition).

Most of us think of “meaning” like this: someone writes or says something → another person listens or reads → the second person thinks about it, feels it, and “understands” what the first person meant. That’s basically hermeneutics—the art of interpreting and understanding messages the way humans do. And we often assume spoken words are the purest way to share meaning (that’s called phonocentrism—the idea that speech is closer to real thought than writing is).  But Jacques Derrida (a French philosopher) says there’s a deeper, more basic level where “information” or “messages” already exist and get passed along before any human understanding or speech even comes into the picture. He calls this level something like “arche-writing” or just “text” in a very wide sense—not books or words, but any system of differences that can carry information automatically.

A system of differences is Derrida’s way of saying that meaning (or information) doesn’t come from things having some fixed, built-in “essence” or positive quality all by themselves. Instead, meaning arises purely from how one thing differs from other things around it—like pieces in a puzzle that only make sense because of their contrasts and relationships to each other.Think of it this way: nothing has meaning in isolation. Everything gets its “job” or “identity” by not being something else. It’s a network of contrasts, oppositions, and distinctions—no center, no single “master meaning,” just endless comparisons:

The alphabet and words

The letter “A” doesn’t have a little picture of an apple inside it that makes it “A.” It only means “A” because it is not B, C, D, etc.

The word “dog” means a four-legged barking animal only because it differs from “cat,” “log,” “fog,” “dig,” etc. If you changed one letter, the whole meaning changes. The system works because every sound or letter is defined by what it excludes. No word has meaning alone; it’s the differences between them that create the language.

Traffic lights

Red doesn’t inherently “mean” stop. It means stop only because it’s not green (go) and not yellow (slow down/caution).

If the whole world used only red lights, “red” would lose its meaning. The color gets its power from being different from the others in the set. The system is three colors defined by their mutual differences.

Musical notes

The note “C” on a piano doesn’t sound sad or happy by itself. It gets its character relative to other notes: higher or lower, major or minor scale. A melody works because each note is placed in a pattern of differences (this pitch vs. that pitch, this duration vs. that duration). Change one note and the whole feeling shifts.

DNA (the biology example we were using)

The four bases—A, T, C, G—have no meaning on their own. A isn’t “the boss base” with some special quality.

A only “means” A because it is chemically different from T, C, and G (different shape, different bonding rules).

The real information lives in the order and differences between them:  A pairs only with T 

C pairs only with G 

A sequence like ATG means “start making this protein” only because it differs from ATA, ATC, etc.

The cell “reads” the differences mechanically—no thinking required. The whole genetic code is one giant system of differences.

Binary code in computers (0 and 1)

Everything on your phone or computer is built from just two symbols: 0 and 1.

0 doesn’t “mean” anything by itself. It only matters because it is not 1.

All photos, videos, games, texts—everything—is patterns of differences between 0 and 1. The system is super simple (just two options), but the differences create infinite information.

Presence

It is empty to say in the house, houseness is present.  However, if I say houseness is present (Parousia) incarnate in the mansion, is merely present in the average house, and deficient in the dilapidated shack, presence makes vivid sense.  But beyond this, the mansion may appear gawdy to the next person, and the shack quaint.  Nietzsche thus notes Will to Power is more basic than texts, which I will address later. 

Most people think meaning starts with something positive and full—like a voice speaking truth, or a clear idea in someone’s head. Derrida says no: the most basic level of information is already this play of differences. It’s automatic, relational, and never fully “present” or complete in one spot. E.g., When Plato says in the beautiful thing beauty is “present,” presence by itself bring nothing to mind and so we need the grades of houseness to bring presence to life via contrasts.  That’s why he calls it “arche-writing” or “text” in the broad sense—it’s writing without an author, without a voice, without anyone needing to understand it consciously.  For example, a feminist reading of a text may show a dimension of the text that completely goes against the author’s intended message.  DNA shows this perfectly: life has been copying and translating these systems of differences for billions of years, long before humans invented speech or philosophy. It’s information that works just by being different from alternatives.  So, a system of differences is basically:

Meaning = what something is NOT, relative to everything else in the set.

DNA is the perfect everyday example of this deeper level working right now, inside every living thing.  To see how DNA passes information without anyone “understanding” it, think of DNA as a very long instruction manual written in a four-letter alphabet: A, T, C, G.

The order of those letters is the message.  The cell “reads” that manual and follows it perfectly without ever thinking about what it means. No little brain inside the cell is going, “Oh, this sequence means make some insulin!” There’s just chemistry happening automatically.

A stretch of DNA gets copied into a temporary message called mRNA (like photocopying one page of the manual).

That mRNA floats over to a tiny factory in the cell called a ribosome.

The ribosome reads the mRNA three letters at a time (each group of three is called a codon).

Each codon matches up with a specific transfer-RNA molecule that carries one particular amino acid (the building blocks of proteins).

The ribosome snaps those amino acids together in exactly the order the codons told it to.

When it’s done, you have a finished protein that goes off and does its job (like an enzyme that breaks down food or a hemoglobin that carries oxygen).

The whole process is like a super-precise machine following a code:  The code says “put part A, then part B, then part C.” 

The machine does exactly that. 

It never asks “Why?” or “What does this protein do for the body?” 

It just obeys the chemical rules that match letters → molecules → actions.

So the information is transmitted and “translated” purely by physical/chemical rules—rules that were built into life billions of years ago. No consciousness, no interpretation, no voice speaking the message aloud. It’s information working at the level of molecules bumping into each other in predictable ways. 

Consider a computer program: The code is just instructions (if this, then that). The computer executes them line by line without “understanding” the video game or app it’s running. It’s blind obedience to the code.

A recipe in a robot chef: You give a robot a list: “add 200 g flour, mix 30 seconds, add egg.” The robot follows every step mechanically. It doesn’t taste the cake or care how good it will be—it just executes.

Dominoes falling: You set them up in a pattern. Knock the first one over and the rest follow exactly because of physics. No domino “understands” that it’s spelling out your name or making a cool shape—it just falls when pushed.

DNA is like the domino chain or the robot chef of life. The “message” is real, it gets copied and translated faithfully across generations, but nothing has to consciously grasp it for it to work.  Derrida is saying: look how much powerful information-moving happens in nature before humans ever started talking or interpreting poems or arguing about what words “really” mean. Speech and deep understanding are latecomers. The most basic “text” is just differences (A vs. T vs. C vs. G) arranged in a pattern that triggers automatic results. That pattern can carry life-or-death instructions for billions of years without anyone ever having to “get it.”

So, there really is a more fundamental level of information transmission that doesn’t need consciousness, speech, or interpretation. DNA shows it in action every second inside your own cells. It’s not magic; it’s chemistry following a code that evolution fine-tuned long before any of us could think about what a code even is.

We are using language of texts and machines to describe biology.  Derrida notes:

In the example we have been considering, namely, the specular reciprocity of the animal/machine models, the machine, on the one hand, is described as an animal; it has an anatomy, a physiology, executive organs activated by a source of energy, sense organs that respond to sonorous, tactile, luminous, and thermic stimuli; it investigates its environment, controls its food, is equipped with centers of automatic control for its activities and its performances, with a memory or a stock of archives and a nervous system that connects the senses to the brain or transmits orders to the limbs. The machine executes a program, but it can also correct it, even interrupt it upon the reception of particular messages, etc. And “conversely”—this is Jacob’s word—the animal can be described as a machine: organs, cells, and molecules form a communication network, with signals and messages, with the flexibility and rigidity of a machine, the flexibility of behavior being regulated by feedback loops and the rigidity regulated by a program. Heredity is then described as the transfer of a message, the program of the structures to be produced being recorded in the nucleus of the egg. Jacob again quotes Schrödinger (What Is Life?, pp. 18–19):

the chromosomes contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its functioning in the mature state. . . . The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power—or, to use another simile, they are architect’s plan and builder’s craft all in one.

In this paragraph where he is explaining that the animal can be described in terms of a machine, Jacob goes ahead and quotes—without paying any attention to this or drawing any attention to it—someone who, in order himself to describe the fact that animal heredity functions like a textual machine, describes the textual or programmatic machine as a socio-political [171] or socio-technical phenomenon (legislative power/executive power, architecture and construction, etc.). This last analogy, which allows one to describe the living being as a machine, rests, in the end, upon another even more general analogy between the living and the non-living, namely, the analogy between the chromosome and the crystal… “The combination of two signs in the Morse code enables any text whatsoever to be coded.” And Jacob concludes this line of argumentation by saying: “The plan of the organism is mapped out by a combinative system of chemical symbols. Heredity functions like the memory of a computer.”24 The reference to writing in Morse code—that is to say, in principle, the simplest form of writing, since it is made up of only two elements (dots/dashes) and is able to re-code or translate-over [surtraduire] every other form of writing— the appeal to Morse code is obviously very significant and supports, better than any other, the textual or grammatical analogy in this domain… Just as a sentence represents a segment of text, so a gene corresponds to a segment of nucleic acid. In both cases, an isolated symbol means nothing; only a combination of symbols has any “sense.”  … The transformation of a nucleic-acid sequence into a protein sequence is like a translation of a message received in Morse that does not make sense until it is translated, into French, for example. This is done by means of a “code” that provides the equivalence of signs between the two “alphabets.” (Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 130). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition).

Likewise, we approach the being of the bacterium by analogy with a factory, though the analogy has limits:

If analogy is to be used, the bacterial cell is obviously best described by the model of a miniaturized chemical factory. Factory and bacterium function only by means of energy received from the exterior. Both transform the raw material taken from the milieu by a series of operations into finished products. Both excrete waste products into their surroundings. But the very idea of a factory implies a purpose, a direction, a will to produce—in other words, an aim for which the structure is arranged and the activities are coordinated. What, then, could be the aim of the bacterium? What does it want to produce that justifies its existence, determines its organization, and underlies its work? There is apparently only one answer to this question. A bacterium continually strives to produce two bacteria. This seems to be its one project, its sole ambition. The little bacterial cell performs at top speed the two thousand or so reactions which constitute its metabolism. It grows. It gradually elongates. And when the time is ripe, it divides. Where there was one individual, suddenly there are two. Each of these individuals then becomes the center of all chemical reactions. Each manufactures all its molecular structures. Each grows anew. A few minutes later, each [174] divides divides in turn to produce two individuals. And so on, for as long as conditions permit. For two billion years or more, bacteria—or something like them—have been reproducing themselves. Structure, function, and chemistry of the bacterial, all have been refined for this end: to produce two organisms identical to itself, as well as possible, as quickly as possible, and under the most varied of circumstances. If the bacterial cell is to be considered as a factory, it must be a factory of a special kind. The products of human technology are totally different from the machines that produce them, and therefore totally different from the factory itself. The bacterial cell, on the other hand, makes its own constituents; the ultimate product is identical with itself. Whereas the factory produces, the cell reproduces itself.29 (Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 131). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.)

Derrida concludes this section that

Perhaps it would be better to bring the question of the logic or of the rhetoric of analogy—which subtends this entire problematic of the model—back to the interior itself, to what Jacob ultimately calls the interior of the internal [175] property of the living, namely, the ability to reproduce oneself…A protein is not born of an identical protein. Proteins do not reproduce themselves. They are organized from another substance, deoxyribonucleic acid, the constituent of chromosomes. This compound is the only one in the cell that can be reproduced by copying itself…A genetic code is like a language: even if they are only due to chance, once the relations between “signifier” and “signified” are established, they cannot be changed. These, then, are the questions molecular biology is trying to answer…You have read the last lines of his book: “But science is enclosed in its own explanatory system and cannot escape from it. Today the world is messages, codes, and information. Tomorrow what analysis will break down our objects to reconstitute them in a new space? What new Russian doll will emerge?”  Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 136). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

But what is Life?

Let’s try to figure out the word “Life” or “Bios.” It is said in many ways, like Aristotle notes of the word “Health.” For example, we speak of “Bio-graphy,” someone’s history. We also speak of “Bio-logy,” the scientific study of living things. Thinkers are said to be alive and a part of Life, but not “close to life,” for example Thales lost in thought and falling into a ditch. Could the ancient Greek or Latin etymology of “Life” be a clue? Did “Life” originally come from a verb? What is Life?

The ancient Greek term most directly corresponding to “life” in our examples is βίος (bíos), from which we get English words like biography (writing/recording of a life course) and biology (study of living things). Its etymology traces back to the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *gʷeyh₃- meaning “to live.”

The root is fundamentally verbal, tied to the concept of living or being alive. There is a related Ancient Greek verb βιόω (bioō) meaning “to live” or “to pass one’s life,” which is denominative (derived from the noun bíos), but the deeper origin is the verbal PIE root for living/existing.

Ancient Greek actually has two main words for “life,” with a meaningful distinction:

• βίος (bíos): Refers to life as a course, manner, or way of life—often with a qualitative sense (e.g., a “good life” or lifetime worthy of recounting). It’s biographical or existential: the narrative shape of existence, livelihood, or how one conducts one’s days. This is the root in biography and biology (though biology draws on the broader sense of living things).
• ζωή (zōḗ): Refers to life as vitality, organic existence, or biological aliveness—sheer living force, animation, or the principle that distinguishes living from non-living. It comes directly from the verb ζῶ (zô) “to live,” with a suffix making it a noun.

Aristotle sharpens this contrast in his ethical and political works (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, Politics). Zōē is bare or animal life—the raw fact of being alive, cyclical, biological (nutrition, growth, sensation). Bíos is qualified, human life—a chosen form or mode of living (e.g., the life of pleasure, politics, or contemplation). One can have zōē (be biologically alive) without a meaningful or engaged bíos (e.g., detached from practical concerns).

Thales example (from Plato’s Theaetetus 174a, though Aristotle references Thales elsewhere) fits perfectly: Thales is biologically alive (zōē) and even philosophically “alive” in thought, but he falls into a ditch because his bíos is so absorbed in contemplation that he neglects the practical, everyday “life” around him—not “close to life” in the grounded, engaged sense of daily bíos.

On Aristotle and “health” as an analogy refers to his famous discussion in Metaphysics (Book Γ) of terms “said in many ways” (pollachôs legomena). Aristotle notes that “being” is not purely equivocal but has a focal meaning (pros hen): all senses relate to a central core (substance). He illustrates with “healthy” (ὑγιεινόν):

• A body is healthy (possesses health, primary sense).
• Urine is healthy (sign/symptom of health).
• Diet is healthy (cause/produces health).

All refer back to one focal thing: health itself. Nietzsche is going to treat Life this way but such that the various senses of life do not refer back to a common root, like triplets growing up in an abusive home where one develops severe PTSD, the next one is unaffected, and the third is stronger for it.

In Aristotle, in De Anima (On the Soul), he defines life by functions of the soul (psychē, the animating principle):

• Basic life: self-nutrition, growth, and decay (plants).
• Animal life: adds sensation and locomotion.
• Human life: adds thought/reason.

Life is “said in many ways” across hierarchies—mere vitality (zōē-like) in plants, fuller capacities in animals, rational flourishing in humans—but all traditionally refer back to the soul as the cause of living.

Latin vīta (“life”) follows a similar pattern: from the verb vīvere “to live” (same PIE root gʷeyh₃- as Greek bios/zoē), so it too originates in a verb.

Etymologically, then, “life” (in Greek/Latin) points to living as an active process or state. Philosophically in Aristotle, it is neither a simple substance nor mere existence, but the presence of soul enabling self-sustaining activity—culminating in the human capacity for a deliberate, examined bíos. The question “What is Life?” remains open across traditions, but the Greek clue is that it is inherently verbal and relational: not just being, but living in a certain way.

There is a strong conceptual connection between bios (βίος) and history, especially through the genre of biography (and autobiography), even though the linguistic connection is indirect rather than direct.  At the Linguistic Level

• Bios (βίος) derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷeyh₃- meaning “to live” or “to be alive.” It originally denoted life as a course, span, or manner of living—the qualitative, narratable shape of existence.
• History comes from Greek ἱστορία (historía), meaning “inquiry,” “investigation,” or “knowledge obtained by inquiry.” It stems from the verb ἱστορεῖν (historeîn) “to inquire” or “to learn by inquiry,” related to ἵστωρ (hístōr) “one who knows” or “witness,” ultimately from PIE *weid- “to see” or “to know.”
• These are distinct roots, so there is no direct etymological link between bios and historia themselves.
• However, the compound word βιογραφία (biographía) explicitly joins bios (“life”) + graphein (“to write”) → “writing/recording of a life.” This term was coined later (in the 17th–18th centuries in modern languages), but it captures an ancient Greek conceptual reality: a life (bios) could be written or recounted as a coherent narrative, much like historical events.

Conceptual Level: The connection is much deeper and more meaningful here.

1. Bios as a narratable life-course
   In ancient Greek thought, bios was not just bare biological existence (that was more zōē), but a shaped, chosen, or exemplary way of living—one that could be examined, judged, and told as a story.
   • Aristotle (in Nicomachean Ethics and elsewhere) treats bios as a form of life (e.g., the political life, the contemplative life, the life of pleasure)—a trajectory with a beginning, middle, and end that could be evaluated for virtue, happiness, or failure.
   • This makes bios inherently historical in the sense that a human life unfolds over time and can be retrospectively narrated.
2. Biography as life-history
   The ancient genre closest to biography was precisely called bios (plural bioi).
   • Plutarch’s famous Parallel Lives (Βίοι Παράλληλοι, written ~100 CE) is a collection of paired bioi—narrative accounts of the lives, characters, and deeds of Greek and Roman figures (e.g., Alexander and Caesar).
   • These were explicitly historical in aim: Plutarch presents them not as mere chronology but as moral and political inquiry into character (ēthos) and how it shaped events—very close to Herodotus’s or Thucydides’s use of historia as investigative narrative.
   • In other words, the bios of a person was a form of history: the history of an individual soul moving through time, decisions, and circumstances.
3. Autobiography as self-history
   Ancient examples are rarer, but they follow the same pattern:
   • Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Anabasis contain strong autobiographical elements.
   • Later, Augustine’s Confessions (4th century CE) is often seen as a precursor to modern autobiography, framing one’s own life as a narrative of sin, conversion, and divine providence—essentially writing one’s personal historia.
   • In all cases, autobiography is the self-authored version of what biography does: recounting a bios as a meaningful sequence of events.
4. Broader philosophical tie
   Thinkers like Aristotle and later the Stoics saw human life (bios) as something that could be reviewed and interpreted—much like a historian reviews events. The examined life (Plato’s famous phrase) is one that can be turned into a story with coherence and meaning, which is precisely what biography and autobiography do.
   In this sense, bios is the subject matter of a certain kind of history: the history of a person’s choices, character, and destiny.

Summary

• Linguistically: No direct shared root between bios and historia, but biography explicitly fuses bios with the act of writing/recording.
• Conceptually: Very strong connection. In Greek usage, bios was already understood as a life-story—a temporal, meaningful narrative that could be investigated, recounted, and preserved, exactly as history (historia) investigates and recounts events. Biography and autobiography are therefore life-history in the most literal sense: the writing of a person’s bios as a historical account.

The ancient intuition was that a human life (bios) is not a random series of moments but a plot or course that can be meaningfully narrated—making it a natural object of historical inquiry. That is why biography emerged as a subgenre of history, and why we still speak of someone’s “life story” or “life history” today.

Everything has a biography, the story of its history, such as the genealogy of morality or substance or tanks.

So, I looked at the genetics of texts and factories for understanding basic biological phenomena, but with Jacob looked at the point that these were analogies that were ways of understanding the phenomena “as,” not that these things are texts, factories, etc. For example, conversely, Jacob touched on viewing factories biologically.  I would like to keep this question of Life in play as we further go on with Derrida to see Freud beyond the pleasure principle to Nietzsche’s Will to Power.  That is to follow.