ABSTRACT
Darwin managed to make this dynamism, this imperative to change, the center of his understanding of life itself and the very debt that life owes to the enabling obstacle that is organized matter. Darwin introduced a new understanding of what science must be to be adequate to the reality of life itself, which has real units, agreed upon boundaries or clear-cut objects, and to the reality of time, change that it entails. The pressure for invention, for innovative production on the part of individual economic agents, Smith argued, is the engine of economic progress insofar as it provides the impetus for mass production, for diversified life in the market. The chapter explores the ontologies in which matter is imbued with a dynamismactivity, in which nature is construed as force, provocation, activity, incitement, as is the fashion in feminist, cultural studies, where nature is considered an inert passivity onto which life, culture, the human impose themselves.
