Purpose & desire : what makes something "alive" and why modern Darwinism has failed to explain it /
SUNY professor, biologist and physiologist J. Scott Turner 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. Tur...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,
[2017]
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| Edition: | First edition. |
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| Summary: | SUNY professor, biologist and physiologist J. Scott Turner 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. Turner surveys the history of evolutionary thought, identifying "purpose and desire" as the keys to a coherent science of life and its evolution. In Purpose and Desire, Turner draws on the work of Claude Bernard, a contemporary of Darwin revered as the founder of experimental physiology. Turner builds on Bernard's "dangerous idea" of homeostasis, a radical proposition for what makes "life" a unique phenomenon in nature. To fully understand life, including its evolution, Turner argues that we must move beyond strictly enforced boundaries of mechanism and materialism to explore living nature as distinctly purposeful and driven by desire. |
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| Physical Description: | xvi, 332 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780062651563 0062651560 |