We need new metaphors that put life at the centre of biology | Aeon Essays

These hypotheses suggest that deep principles govern the emergence of problem-solving matter, principles that push our understanding of modern physics and chemistry towards their limits. They mark a radical departure from life as we once knew it.

Favored metaphors change over time, but—and this is less often appreciated—that does not simply mean that one supplants the other. The concept of “vitalism” might be traced back to the Aristotelian soul and is generally regarded as obsolete in biology today, but in fact we’ll see that it still survives in cryptic forms, most particularly in the way

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