Is life more than a performance of "natural systems"? How do living beings differ from artifacts? Can living beings be produced in the same way as machines? These questions become particularly urgent with the rise of "converging technologies," as the more biology, engineering, computer science, and physics converge, the less clear the usual distinctions seem to be. However, a systematic reconstruction of the life sciences in their current form as systems biology and synthetic biology reveals that this represents a misunderstanding of the logic of scientific representation. An alternative understanding of the conceptual structure of our discourse about the living is the focus of this book. Life is thus defined as a form of activity relationships that allows for both theoretical and practical justifications. The unfolding of.