https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organisms/issue/feed 2026-07-08T10:20:49+00:00 Editorial Board Andras.Paldi@ephe.psl.eu Open Journal Systems <div id="custom-3"> <h3>FOREWORD</h3> <p><em>“He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he is going”.</em> </p> <p>(Leonardo da Vinci)</p> <p style="text-indent: 40px;" align="justify">At the beginning of the 21st century, biology is facing an epistemological crisis which anticipates a paradigm change. Reductionism and the molecular analysis it favors have failed to bring about an understanding of complex phenomena in biology. This will require a reappraisal of old research concepts. The dominant view during the last fifty years has been that development is merely the unfolding of a genetic program.</p> <p style="text-indent: 40px;" align="justify">This perception is now being challenged by the resurgence of the once prominent fields of biological inquiry, namely, ecological and evolutionary developmental biology. However, these efforts remain few and far between because they are diluted by a sea of publications still based on reductionist interpretations. Meanwhile, there is no source explicitly committed to a perspective centered on organisms. Thus, there is a need for a journal dedicated to high quality theoretical and experimental work while promoting an interdisciplinary approach to the main topics in biology. We expect that “ORGANISMS” will fill this gap by addressing biological questions from perspectives different from the currently prevalent one.</p> <p style="text-indent: 40px;" align="justify">The philosopher Kant stated that in organisms "every part is thought as owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also as existing for the sake of the others and of the whole". This conception of organisms is as central to biology today as it was when it inspired generations of embryologists, the ones invoked when referring to Müllerian ducts, germ layers, and notochord. From this perspective, the causal determination of biological phenomena is not exclusively bottom-up; the agency of each part implies a complex and reciprocal structure of determination. Research programs based on the ideas advanced by those who favored the molecular biology revolution have unintentionally shown that organisms cannot be analyzed only in terms of genes and molecules. This statement will not surprise physicists, because they do not intend to reduce one theory onto another, say classical or relativistic physics to quantum mechanics. Instead, they strive for unifications, that is, for a new theory encompassing two or more theoretical frames. And yet, mainstream biologists are still committed to uncovering the molecular mechanisms that according to reductionism will provide an explanation to every biological phenomenon. The technological improvements conceived to address mechanisms have generated an avalanche of data but biologists neither have the theoretical bases nor an adequate language to make sense of them, particularly when trying to explain the advent of new functions, the generation of shapes (morphogenesis), or the ability of the organism to create its own rules. We acknowledge that the language generated by the molecular biology revolution, namely the concepts of information, program, signal, is theoretically laden forcing causal analysis toward molecules supposed to carry information, such as genes and their products. This structure of determination is inimical to the study of organisms. Consequently, a change of theoretical frame will also require that biologists elaborate a different language, free of these connotations.</p> <p style="text-indent: 40px;" align="justify">Finally, this journal is neither married to a theory nor does it represent the view of a particular group. Its purpose is to encourage researchers to submit manuscripts that a) make explicit the postulates, principles and perspectives that form the conceptual framework of their research subjects, b) foster theoretical and experimental work in the vast field of biology, and c) promote the salutary effect of “friction” between theory and experiment.</p> </div> https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organisms/article/view/19491 2026-07-08T07:08:24+00:00 Ali Hossaini ali.hossaini@kcl.ac.uk

<p>What constitutes a valid theory of life? This paper opens a special issue of Organisms devoted to that question. It proposes criteria for evaluating competing definitions of life and establishes a critical framework for assessing claims about living and non-living objects. Mapping the intellectual terrain from Aristotelian and Cartesian causality to thermodynamics and contemporary information theory, the paper identifies recurring conceptual errors — above all, a covert dualism that persists across otherwise opposed positions — that theorists of life would do well to correct. It links these academic debates to practical challenges in ecology, medicine and technology, arguing that the question of life carries genuine civilizational urgency.</p>

2026-07-11T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Hossaini Ali https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organisms/article/view/19492 2026-07-08T10:20:49+00:00 Karina Kofman karinako310@gmail.com Christoph Adami adami@msu.edu František Baluška f.baluska@uni-bonn.de Joshua Bongard josh.bongard@uvm.edu Douglas Brash douglas.brash@yale.edu Paco Calvo fjcalvo@um.es Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic gordana.dodig-crnkovic@chalmers.se Pranab Das daspra@elon.edu Chris Fields fieldsres@gmail.com Tom Froese tom.froese@oist.jp Pier Luigi Gentili pierluigi.gentili@unipg.it Georgi Yordanov Georgiev ggeorgie@assumption.edu Scott F. Gilbert sgilber1@swarthmore.edu Timothy N. W. Jackson timothy.jackson@unimelb.edu.au Stuart Kauffman stu@systemsbiology.org Nick Lane nick.lane@ucl.ac.uk Perry Marshall edith@perrymarshall.com Dan McShea dmcshea@duke.edu William Miller wbmiller1@cox.net Stuart Newman newman@nymc.edu Alistair Nunn A.Nunn@westminster.ac.uk Theodore P. Pavlic tpavlic@asu.edu Martin Picard martin.picard@columbia.edu William Ratcliff william.ratcliff@biology.gatech.edu Arthur Reber na@na.it James Shapiro jsha@midway.uchicago.edu Aaron Sloman a.sloman@bham.ac.uk Ricard Solé ricard.sole@upf.edu Carlos Sonnenschein carlos.sonnenschein@tufts.edu Susan Stepney susan.stepney@york.ac.uk Richard Watson R.A.Watson@soton.ac.uk Olaf Witkowski olaf@cognisee.ai Michael Levin michael.levin@tufts.edu

<p>Life is one of the most fascinating features of the physical world. Despite centuries of scientific study, experts still disagree about the definition, and even the possibility or utility of a definition, of this field. In a recent paper, we used AI to analyze the conceptual space formed by definitions of life given by a select set of modern workers in the life sciences and related fields. However, some of the most interesting material emerged as real-time conversations among those polled. In order to ensure that these ideas are not lost to the peer-reviewed scientific record, we here provide a minimally-edited (largely verbatim) transcript of the email chain among leading thinkers, containing numerous clarifications, disagreements, and challenges that enrich the topic of Life. It is our hope that this case study serves as an example for future papers, since the exchange of ideas among scientists is at least as interesting and valuable as formal scientific manuscripts written from a single perspective.</p>

2026-07-13T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Karina Kofman, Christoph Adami, František Baluška, Joshua Bongard, Douglas Brash, Paco Calvo, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Pranab Das, Chris Fields, Tom Froese, Pier Luigi Gentili, Georgi Yordanov Georgiev, Scott F. Gilbert, Timothy N. W. Jackson, Stuart Kauffman, Nick Lane, Perry Marshall, Dan McShea, William Miller, Stuart Newman, Alistair Nunn, Theodore P. Pavlic, Martin Picard, William Ratcliff, Arthur Reber, James Shapiro, Aaron Sloman, Ricard Solé, Carlos Sonnenschein, Susan Stepney, Richard Watson, Olaf Witkowski, Michael Levin