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The Cell

All human beings share their life experience as corporeal beings - bodies living in a physical world. Our historically deepening knowledge of human physical being has lead to our awareness of the microscopic materiality of which we are all composed: the cell.

The cell is the smallest structural unit of the body. All life on Earth originates phylogenically and ontogenically from the cell. Cells are biogenetic, having descended from previous cells and driven to reproduce through division. In all organisms, reproductive and survival instincts ensure the propagation of cells and the continuation of the physiologies that are constituted of them. This biogenesis has developed through the process of evolution, resulting in a vast biodiversity of species. This massive biodiversity exists on three different levels: genetics, species, and ecology.

Competition between species results in improved success of survival (measured by the genetic continuation of a species) within an ecology. This struggle characterizes the mechanism of natural selection, the driving force behind evolution. The process of evolution resulted in the emergence of mammals about 200 Ma (million years ago), then primates 56 to 35 Ma, followed by Hominids 2 Ma, and then modern humanity around 250 000 years ago. Though prehistoric mammals have changed over time to become Homo sapiens sapiens, the genetic continuity is mainly unbroken; 6 million years separates modern humans from great apes, yet we share almost 99% of our genes with chimpanzees. Thus we have an ancient biological heritage that informs our animate form (the spatiality of a species specific body; two arms, two legs, etc.) and a tactile-kinesthetic experience (the personal, lived body) that ensures our particular kind of corporeal existence (Sheets-Johnstone, 1990). This bodily existence is based on cellular survival. Taking all of this into account, the life and death of the cell is vitally important from phylogenic and ontogenic perspectives and to a modern understanding of death.