INSTRUCTIONS for evaluation of biology and your relation to it:
Do each of the 8 statements below reflect contemporary views among biologists?
To what degree do you agree with each statement?
The larger question is what does any dissonance between your two answers for each statement say about the state of biology or your relation to it. I have placed my own partial reflection on each statement down below.

1 The key feature of life is organisms or living things,
2 The path from chemistry to the first cell is either highly improbable or, if a deterministic event, then beyond current science to explicate,
3 life is a collection of species where multicellular animals are the main event,

After not having written throughout this year, I will take the chance for a quick summary of my own path in the philosophy of biology as a condensation of what this blog aims for. A core issue that I see is that our current paradigm has a naive view of the nature of life. Whatever life is has been reduced to a living thing or better, the collection of living things. But what is a living thing? No such concept comes out of physics in its terms of mass, length, time, and forces. But biology is just as clueless; so evolutionary theory conveniently begins with the first living thing, presumably a first cell, or maybe a collection of protocells in what amounts to undefined almost living things. This is astounding when put in context. Many people today get excited about the “mysteries” at the edge of physics such as dark matter or string theory, but why is life not a much more important mystery as we are of it and it is all around us? While science has generally been considered to be mature and to have done a formidable job of

Too many years of writing and researching. It’s time to travel and talk. Seeking all those interested in evolutionary theory, its potential “extension,” origin-of-life studies and their potential effects on evolutionary theory, evolutionary understandings of the modern world of humans, the history of science as it relates to the life sciences, and the repercussions of the probable advances in the life sciences to philosophy and theology. A process view of life is a (potentially) significant major shift in our views of life/living and of our places in the cosmos.

Looking forward to talks, criticism, advice, and new breakthroughs!