Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something "Alive" and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It

by J. Scott Turner

A professor, biologist, and physiologist argues that modern Darwinism’s materialist and mechanistic biases have led to a scientific dead end, unable to define what life is—and only an openness to the qualities of "purpose and desire" will move the field forward.Scott Turner contends. "To be scientists, we force ourselves into a Hobson’s choice on the accept intentionality and purposefulness as real attributes of life, which disqualifies you as a scientist; or become a scientist and dismiss life’s distinctive quality from your thinking. I have come to believe that this choice actually stands in the way of our having a fully coherent theory of life."Growing research shows that life's most distinctive quality, shared by all living things, is purpose and maintain homeostasis to sustain life. In Purpose and Desire, Turner draws on the work of Claude Bernard, a contemporary of Darwin revered among physiologists as the founder of experimental medicine, to build on Bernard’s "dangerous idea" of vitalism, which seeks to identify what makes "life" a unique phenomenon of nature. To further its quest to achieve a fuller understanding of life, Turner argues, science must move beyond strictly accepted measures that consider only the mechanics of nature.A thoughtful appeal to widen our perspective of biology that is grounded in scientific evidence, Purpose and Desire helps us bridge the ideological evolutionary divide.

Genres: Science, Evolution, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Biology, Anthropology

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Although I was born in Massachusetts, I grew up in California and remain a westerner at heart. After a mis-spent adolescence and young adulthood, I decided to go to college, earning a Bachelor's degree from University of California, Santa Cruz. From there, I went on to obtain advanced degrees in Zoology from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Since then, I have been struggling to get back west, but my career keeps pushing me east. The furthest east it has pushed me has been to southern Africa, where I had a joyous several years as a biologist until I stumbled into fatherhood and family life, which was the best thing that ever happened to me. Since 1990, I have been on the faculty of a small forestry college in upstate New York, and reside in the small town of Tully, in a large renovated farmhouse with my wife Debbie, and for many years, my two children, Jackie and Emma, now launched. We have co-habited our house with several animals (3 three dogs in succession, and 2 cats that liked the cut of our jib and moved in uninvited). I venture regularly to southern Africa (South Africa and Namibia) for my research.

Reviews

[Jim Razinha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alan Sokal wrote a delightful essay titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". If that sounds like gobbledygook, well, trust your brain - it is. Sokal punked the postmodern cultural studies movement in 1996 with that gem which was published in an academic journal without peer review. Sokal revealed it to be a hoax three weeks after publication, created to demonstrate the nonsense people bought into. Richard Dawkins, who Turner identified in his Preface as one of four bad guys (he opens the book with "Just shoot me now, followed by quotes from the four so infer what you will...I did), has a self-titled “Dawkins’ Law of the Conservation of Difficulty” defined as

“that obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. Physics is a genuinely difficult and profound subject, so physicists need to – and do – work hard to make their language as simple as possible (‘but no simpler,’ rightly insisted Einstein). Other academics – some would point the finger at continental schools of literary criticism and social science – suffer from what Peter Medawar (I think) called Physics Envy. They want to be thought profound, but their subject is actually rather easy and shallow, so they have to language it up to redress the balance.”

I’ve been in a mini reading funk since working from home became the norm and I’m breaking it by finishing a Tom Swift, Jr. book - mild science fiction adventure that targeted adolescent boy minds in the 1950s - and now this, a mild pseudoscience fiction aimed at adolescent-like (with respect to actual science) minds the Discovery Institute loves to target. I had this on my List, and like several on there, I don’t recall why. Perhaps someone recommend it as earth-shattering; or maybe I saw it somewhere and saved it to check out someday.

I do read now and then the fun stuff that tries and fails to point out failures in so-called Darwinism. It can be hard to debunk clever gobbledygook. Martin Gardner did it elegantly, and politely, sometimes with subtle snark but always with verifiable refutations. Michael Shermer carried on his legacy, even going so far as to agree to “debate” Duane Gish (the quotes are there because Galloping Gish never debated... he shotgunned a bunch of nonsense and then more when anyone called him on any of it; quite practiced at BS, that one was). And then there are the rest of the cranks over there at the Discovery Institute, the Templeton Foundation and their pet endorsements: creation “scientists”, rebranded IDers, who want their unnatural claims to be taken seriously (presumably to indoctrinate people against perceived indoctrination) so they language them up. And Turner is pretty good at that - though he disingenuously appeals to his target by calling epistemology a “ten-dollar word”. Got a laugh from me...who doesn’t know what that means? Oh...sorry target audience. I didn’t see you there. So, yes, Turner is clever.

And full of cognitively aware manure. Wait? What? Cognitively aware, you say? Turner, as I said is quite clever. He manipulates real definitions to fit his argument and he makes up his own: "An individual nerve cell is cognitively aware of the fluid environment in the brain in which it bathes,..." Yes, he did say that. He also argues,

For example, both [a cumulus cloud and cauliflower] are what we call open thermodynamic systems, that is, organized streams of matter and energy that, through what has come to be called the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics, generate a peculiar and specified orderliness.

I should advise that I have an undergraduate and masters degree in mechanical engineering and took lots of thermodynamics classes on both levels. Curiously, we never studied a Fourth Law...because there is none. Turner says "So there is a deep thermodynamic similarity between the two." Fuzzy scientists should not try to use science to explain their fuzziness...necessitates the addition of quotes to their “science”. Now, I should further advise that I am not an evolutionary biologist, but neither is Turner, and he demonstrates a lack of understand of evolution throughout this entire book. Or, he cleverly obfuscates his actual understanding with his agenda, which is endorsed by ID entities. He eventually drops the charade and starts talking about his intelligent creator as the only possible answer to how life could have originated, but he starts with his conclusion:

This uncomfortable spot is the starting point for the broad question that will be my theme throughout this book: do we have a coherent theory of evolution? [...]We are coming to the point, though, where what it cannot explain is coming into stark relief, making it impossible any longer to ignore the muddle.
For example, we don’t have a good Darwinian explanation for the origin of life.

See? Clever. And sneaky. Darwinism does not posit those origins, rather how species can evolve. Ignorantly obtuse or deliberately obfuscatory?

As the conventional story goes, adaptation is the “good fit” between organism and environment, that suite of behaviors, attributes, phenotypes, whatever we wish to call them, that enable “fit” organisms to be more fecund than organisms that are not so “fit.”

I must not really understand because fecundity is not the end, rather survival through reproduction. Lots of offspring may or may not be better. More sneakiness:

To illustrate, consider how a recent (and admirable) textbook of evolution put it: “Adaptations are the products of natural selection, while adaptation is the response to natural selection.” This demonstrates, in one short and elegantly crafted sentence, The Problem: our current conception of this core evolutionary idea is essentially meaningless. What is adaptation? The product of natural selection! What is natural selection? The outcome of adaptation!

Who does he fool with this? The quoted statement may be clumsy but it is just repeating itself! And he is misrepresenting what is is saying. Read that again: adaptations are the products of,... and the response to, natural selection. Now, adaptation is something that occurs, naturally selected or not. Survival of an adaptation demonstrates natural selection. And as only in his pseudoscience world do things stop there, more adaptations springing from those survivors can happen, to survive further or not. He calls his framed argument a tautology, and it is, but that is not what was said nor what scientists understand evolution to be. Clever twisting on his part.

He thinks because we may not yet understand how life came to be, we can't have a coherent theory of life (well, actually...) and "And if we don’t have a coherent theory of life, how can we have a coherent theory of evolution?" Clever. I know I keep using that word, but I do think it means what I think it means. He's coupling two things that may one day fit together, but we can have a true scientific theory of evolution - the mechanisms of evolution and adaptation, with genetic random variations included - that doesn't necessarily need to explain something before the starting point. Scientists can imagine what happened before the Big Bang, but it is speculation and may mean nothing (which the universe certainly could have come from - see Lawrence Krauss and others). In the case of life, it came about within our universe's existence, so scientists can determine how. To borrow from James Morrow, "Science does have all the answers. We just don't have all the science." Turner says "Darwinian evolution therefore relies upon a coherent theory of adaptation." But really, it relies on a theory that adaptation occurs. Mechanisms are still be learned.

This book is a mess of jargon and subtle and not so subtle misrepresentations of evolutionary theory. He reveals his agenda many times:

The conclusion is inescapable: something beyond mere chance seems to have drawn life into being, helping it up from the dead world. But what could that something be? Creationists are at the ready with their answer, of course, waving their irrefutable claim for what (or, more precisely, who) did the helping. You can scoff at their answer all you want, but that’s just deflection from the embarrassing question: what is your answer?

And,

...from where do the replicators themselves come, things begin to loop around on themselves. The replicability that underlies DNA’s status as a repository of hereditary memory depends upon a host of metabolic processes specified by particular protein catalysts. Those protein catalysts would not exist, of course, without the replicable hereditary memory. [...]
The dilemma is obvious: each of the two necessary attributes of current life—heredity and metabolism—must exist for the other to exist. It is impossible (deluded, actually) to imagine such an intertwined system coming together all at once, with no intelligence guiding it.

Impossible for him (and his target audience) to imagine. Amazing ability to cobble together such science to bend to his agenda, and yet crippled with a lack of imagination. Okay, it's clear in one respect he's highly imaginative. Actually more than one...he did imagine a Fourth Thermodynamic Law. But here's one to chew on:

Which leads us to the strange question: what law demands that life has to evolve up, from the small scale to the large? Why couldn’t it have been the other way? Why couldn’t life—homeostasis, essentially—have emerged first at the large scale, even as a planetary phenomenon, sustained at a large scale on pre-existing orderly flows of matter and energy until it could be encapsulated within the safe harbor of the cell? All that is needed is an energy source that is large enough to overcome the disruptive power of diffusion at a small scale and that is persistent enough to allow incipient conspiracies of homeostasis to piggyback on that standing thermodynamic wave. And that only occurs at large scale.

Cute hypothesis, but that’s not what happened on this planet, silly pseudoscientist! He claims "The idea of life originating on a planetary scale is odd enough." Really? But...it did. Here's where he jumps the rails:

Even stranger, cognition and intentionality had to have actually preceded the origin of cellular life.

He argues cells are the way they are because they wanted to be that way; that birds fly because their ancestors wanted to fly. Turner says "intentionality can be defined very broadly." Sure, if the definition doesn't fit your conclusion, change the definition!

He likes to call out the question marks of what we don’t know yet. You will see his God of the gaps is homeostasis. Apparently, it is at odds with the theory of evolution, and so is he.

Which brings me to the book you hold in your hand. I have come to believe that there is something presently wrong with how we scientists think about life, its existence, its origins, and its evolution

But any reader of mild astuteness will see what his god really is.

I am reminded of a bit from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation: Asimov has a main character take a liberty of having someone analyze an Imperial envoy’s supposed assurances of protection and “after two days of steady work, [the analyst] succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications [...], he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out. Lord Dorwin [not a misspelling, though somewhat coincidental] rather , gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.”

I noticed.

[James P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting thoughts, I can see why some materialists would think he is an closet ID guy. He, however, is much like Denton and Nagel and other atheists who just don’t think Chance and Necessity have the power to explain consciousness and beyond...

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a science book for lay people. I would like to give it 4 stars because the writing is engaging, the research is thorough and far-ranging (almost too much) and it addresses the hot topic of how evolution really works. He explores a bazillion theories and sub-theories of evolution and tries to explain how they intersect--and how they don't--and how they might be true --or maybe not. But he never really lands anywhere definitive, and though a definitive stance is perhaps not possible with our limited scientific knowledge on the subject, I would have appreciated more than just a nod (encapsulated in the chapter called "The Hand of Whatever") toward vitalism, the evolutionist idea that there is an intentionality behind all that exists, as opposed to the purely reductionist idea that has prevailed throughout the 20th century. He notes in the Epilogue that he wrote the book to explain how he's come to change his mind about evolution, how he's moved from the purely mechanistic to the vitalist point of view. He just doesn't hold his position very firmly. But maybe that's OK.

[atharvroooom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful love letter to the idea of (re)introducing 'life' into the life sciences.

Being a proud Hitchenite, and given the recent religious unfoldings that have hindered scientific pursuit in USA, I harbored an unhealthy amount of cynicism and loathing towards religion combined with the pursuit of science. Mr. Turner has made me disrobe that very cynicism and loathing, and even warm up to the idea that religious people can be good people of science without letting their beliefs hinder scientific inquiry.

The books brings with itself a lot of questions, and the prima motive of that questioning is not in fact, seeking their answers- but to look at the current state of biology and the introspection of the failing mechanisms for finding answers to said questions. A brilliant and thought provoking book, Turner suggests newer, perhaps better lenses for myopia that has beseeched modern Darwinism.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the deepest books I've read in a long time, and I have to admit that the only reason I gave it a 4 inste3ad of 5 star rating is that I am not sure he made his case, though that may simply be that he made his case and I wasn't conversant enough with the material to understand it. The author argues against a totally mechanistic view of life as presented by the most radical of neo-Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins, pointing out that explanations of how life works miss the question of why life is in the first place. To me he made a very good argument that life arises because living things have both purpose and desire, wanting to live and creating environments in which they can live. I'd actually like to read it again and would if it weren't due back at the library. I recommend it, especialy if you don't feel comfortable with those who view life as a meaningless accidental quirk of nature.

[Rod Innis · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was some good information in this book. The author asked some great questions and the origin of life that evolution has failed to answer and actually evolution proponents try to put down any inquiry.

But, there is a lot of irrevelant information, perhaps included to make the book long enough. I waded through a lot of defense of evolution with no real evidence. It was just assumed that the reader know that the word was millions of years old, no questions asked. He then attacks the very same system for failing to take into account the fact that we are not just mechanics. I don't think that he did a good job of proving his point. He believes in a designer but used that term very rarely.

[Amarantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a hard book to read as English isn’t my native language and there’s a lot of science terms and concepts I’m not familiar with. But here’s what I learnt:
The author first says how functionality is subjective, making it easy to project on what you’re observing , that’s why modern scientists are trained to view the world from a stance, as far as possible (positivism??)
There’s no coherent theory of evolution. Since there is no good explanation of the origin of life from Darwinism there won’t be a good explanation for what life is. So the problem with modern Darwinism is that they lack a coherent story from the very beginning. The epistemic closure of biology through the 20th century provoked intellectual energy and creativity. That’s when the idea of homeostasis became mechanized.
He lightens Claude Bernard's concept of homeostasis which is not the outcome of life but what it is before, it asks why not how. It is what makes life unique (a statement of rational mechanism, rather it is a vitalist idea). It is not related to stability but the persistent dynamic disequilibrium, the “self-adjusting” confluence of forces is precisely what living things do as a matter of routine in a changing environment (everything around us is alive and doing it).
From the epilogue:
Homeostasis, is the relentless striving of living systems, the persistence and self-sustenance. It is life's fundamental property, what distinguishes it from nonlife. It does not derive from natural selection, it is homeostasis that drives selection. The cause of evolution is life striving for persistence, the aim is driven by a cognitive sense of self. There is a deep intelligence in life at work and cannot be denied (in opposition to modern Darwinism). Science is a cultural phenomenon, its objective value comes from its practice of questioning nature itself to answer for what nature is. Science cannot hold itself apart from the culture in which it is immersed, it is shaped by it.

[Fraser Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thesis of the book: Scott Turner raises a very important issue in Biology, which, he correctly points out, we ignore at our peril. The critical question that begs for an answer is, what does it mean for something to be alive? Turner argues that any biological system maintains homeostasis with intention and cognition is 'alive'. Turner tells us a story of how Biology moved away from the search for vitality starting in the 18th century in France. This move was not abrupt, but a gradual move over a couple of centuries by epistemic closure and advancement in the ability to look at ever smaller scales. The epistemic closure was the move from methodological naturalism to a metaphysical naturalism that was gradually progressed in Britain post-Darwin. As techniques for observing things at a microscale allowed scientists to discover the gene. This potent combination snuffed out any discussion of vitality and reduced biological life to a neo-Darwin synthesis. The Lamarckian ghost has come to haunt 21st Biologist because of the apparent intelligence and purpose that is observed in biological systems.

What I like about the book?: Turner understands that science doesn't operate in a vacuum, but very much reflects the political and cultural questions surrounding scientists. He provides ample examples to make the case for him.

What I didn't like about the book?: There was too much jargon in some of the chapters that someone outside the field like myself had a very difficult time following.

[Betsy Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting historical overview of how we came to the modern understanding of evolution and why it is incomplete and how our explanations of the evolution of adaptation is reliant on circular reasoning. Interesting idea suggesting homeostasis as the primary driver of organisms. Keeps coming back to the concept of intensionality of life, but never offers a satisfying explanation.

[Anik Nandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book to read that argues briefly about the philosophies and the facts regarding our evolution. It will make you stop and question almost everything you know! It has been an incredible learning experience going through this book. I was given this book on my birthday. I thank that person for such an insightful gift.

[Phil Lawless · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a complex but challenging book. I thought I knew Darwinism, but clearly I do not. That varieties that are presented here are astounding. It is a fairly clear delineation of changes that have occurred in Darwinism, but no clear winner presented.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covered a lot of familiar ground in the history of biology, and only made a few worthwhile points about scientific dogma. Turner seems to believe that the idea of homeostasis is a lot more original and important than this mild critique suggests.

[Be Quiet Mommy's Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had more than a usually-tolerable number of slow, snoozer parts BUT: the premise is so poetic, and there are plenty of moments to inspire wonder and awe. That's what I look for in great science writing. The rest can be skimmed.

[Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up. The author was certainly sure he had a brilliant insight, but apparently too brilliant to be explained clearly.

[Neh · Rating 3 out of 5]

some chapters were totally invaluable but what a waste of space. often too nerdy and too long.

[Jonah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written book which I enjoyed almost to the end...I just can't agree with Scott's conclusion though.

[Bill Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://beingbeliefbehavior.blogspot....

[Celeste Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cherry-picked, highly romanticized, and not convincingly argued.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could vitalism, purpose, desire be compatible with evolution?

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is unfortunate in that it turns to the sort of defunct mode of explanation that drove mystical factions of biology in the 19th century. Namely, it is a return to vitalism; the primary difference it that only a part of the soul, intentionality (what cognitive scientist’s would license just at the level of cognitive systems), is called for (rather than the whole -mind or -soul force).
However, just as early 20th century scientists were able show mystical thinking to be the only real explanation for fandom over the idea that a whole -mind or -soul force pervades the order of our biosphere (the way electricity or gravity does our universe), our scientists have been able to show that intentionality is a higher order, psychological affair that supervenes on organic functions, which are more complex than anything that happens at the level of the gene. The book gets this and the order of explanation backwards: whereas science is progressively more fundamental as we go from sociology and psychology through biology and into physics, Mr. Turner regressively appeals to the subject matter of a less basic science, psychology, to explain phenomena at a more basic level of explanation.

The end goal of a fully unified science is to be able to parse each science in terms of the next more basic science, because we believe reality is fundamentally understandable. It does biology no more good to say that life or genes are essentially minded (i.e. intentional) than it did to say that biology is undergirded by a life force. At present, the least popular metaphysical theories of minds in cognitive science are forms of dualism. These state that minds exist quite apart from the physical bodies that have them. Yet, those are the sorts of minds that would make it plausible to say that genes or primitive lifeforms (cauliflower) have intentionality, for they do not depend on the complex organic systems that ground minds in the vastly more complex animals that can actually be claimed to have intentionality. Good science unifies; Mr. Turner’s would do the opposite (and may really be no more a science that was the mysticism promulgated by his deluded 19th century brethren).

More concretely, Doctor Turner ascribes desire to genes, bacteria, and other less animate phenomena to explain the stability of physical or behavioral traits, which are the actual basis of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the way natural selection works. His evidence ranges from microscopic biology to what can be said of whole animals, and he supports his theories with figures and graphs of body traits and scientific formulas, constantly citing behavior (or seeming behavior) of things that scientists do not ordinarily take to be cognitive systems. Overall, he claims scientists do not base modern Darwinism on natural selection and, further, that the promoters who say that it does do not recognize the way culture and religion accounts for evolution. Turner cherry picked a mixture of scientific theories, theological ideas, and philosophical concepts that are most beneficial for support, but fails to provide in-depth discussion or follow a set of principles that unify science. That he should appeal to culture and religion to find explanans for his explanandum betrays a lack of integrity. He has been quite rightly called out for misplacing sound motivation for misbegotten creationism: The whole work smacks of his hidden agenda and tenuous grasp of modern cognitive science. Footnotes, endnotes and an index are included.

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[AvianBuddha · Rating 5 out of 5]

J. Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire is a profound critique of modern Darwinism, challenging its rejection of purposeful agency and desire in the evolutionary process. The book is dense and deeply philosophical, so rather than summarizing it in full, I will focus on its core argument and raise an example from ornithology that further convinces me of Turner’s perspective.

Turner argues that modern Darwinism harbors an internal tension, one that has existed since the inception of evolutionary thought. At the heart of this tension is the contradiction between adaptation - the ability to change in response to environmental conditions - and heredity, which imposes the past onto the future. Even Darwin himself struggled with this issue, particularly in his now-defunct theory of gemmules.

Through an exhaustive analysis of biological systems, Turner makes the case for a vitalist conception of homeostasis. All physiological changes within an organism are directed toward a single overarching goal: maintaining the constancy of its internal environment and thereby ensuring its continued existence. In this view, the organism is not merely a static entity but a dynamic, ongoing process - an interplay of nested adaptive interfaces. Each component of an organism, from cells to organs, acts as an adaptive interface, regulating physiological processes that sustain homeostasis.

Much like ion pumps in a cell membrane regulate salt balance despite external fluctuations, Turner argues that homeostasis is not confined to an internal environment. Instead, it extends outward, encompassing both the organism and its surroundings. This insight follows directly from the conservation of mass - organisms must constantly interact with their environments to maintain stability. Life, then, is about internalizing and stabilizing the unruly external world through the construction of new adaptive interfaces.

Our bodies themselves are full of such interfaces - kidneys, brains, and even entire ecosystems that organisms engineer for their benefit. This extends to social structures as well. For example, earthworms modify soil, transforming it into an adaptive interface that protects their water-dependent physiology. Likewise, social insects construct elaborate nests that buffer against environmental instability. Organisms at all scales - from cells to entire species - are engaged in a vast, biosphere-spanning “conspiracy of extended homeostasis,” continually reshaping their environments to sustain life.

Cognition, Intentionality, and Evolution

A central claim of Purpose and Desire is that homeostasis is inherently cognitive. It requires organisms to sense their environments, distinguish themselves from them, and act accordingly. This means that all living systems, in some form, possess cognition - the ability to map external conditions onto internal processes. Likewise, because cognition involves responding to environmental information, it necessarily implies intentionality. Organisms do not merely react to the world; they reshape it in pursuit of specific ends.

Turner connects this idea to evolutionary theory, arguing that evolution is largely driven by the intentions of cognitive individual actors. Adaptation is not a blind process of random mutation and selection but rather an active, self-directed phenomenon. This perspective aligns with theories like active inference, which propose that cognition arises from self-organizing processes that minimize uncertainty by continuously updating internal models of the world.

[Kristjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am giving this book an extra star for the intellectual honesty of the writer. Just admitting that there are questions that Darwinism has trouble explaining is all too rare these days. Then I'm taking off one star for the author repeatedly making design arguments yet being completely unwilling to countenance the possibility of supernatural involvement in the origins of life.

He speaks of bacteria inventing, bacteria learning (pp. 166-167). Life is a code and it begins as a desire in the mind of the coder (p. 211). Cognition precedes life (p. 253). Life is striving (p. 292) yet the striving precedes the life!

The author admits that agency is unavoidable (p. 283), that without the living organism that is marked by purpose and desire, modern evolution is just a magnificent contrivance (p. 290). "A deep intelligence is at work in life, its operations, and its history, and it cannot be denied" (p. 292).

I cannot complete this review without mentioning all the big words the author uses. I have a graduate degree in a field of science, but there were at least a couple of words that I had to look up in the dictionary in each chapter. An important one in this book is "epistemology" and, more specifically, "epistemic closure".

All in all, a well-written book that was enjoyable to read and philosophically challenging.

[Walt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very different book than Turner's previous work, The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself, but is both a worthy sequel and an exposition of the concepts modern biology has lost in its quest for reductionist explanations of life. It traces the history of evolutionary vitalism and mechanism, from their beginnings in the days of Darwin, Lamarck, and Cuvier up through the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, and emerges with the realization that both are necessary to understand adaptation and natural selection. Critical to such an understanding is the concept of homeostasis, the maintenance of environments by organisms to best perpetuate themselves. Homeostasis is critical to the survival of any organism, and here is finally put into a theoretical framework that should allow for exciting discoveries in the years to come.

I do have to add that the epilogue poorly explains its ideas, but the book overall is very well written.