It appears the mathematicians and physicists were invited to the table and once they began making observations from their own, much more rigorous, disciplines were often ignored or eschewed by many biologists, e.g. Pattee, Rocha, Rosen, Yockey.
Most notably in my view is the question "what is life v non-life/death in nature" which is rather fundamental to mathematicians and physicists looking at biological systems whereas to biologists, whose mission is to study life, there is almost no interest in anything beyond descriptions. Or to put it another way, the biologists seem to be content to know what life looks like and have no interest in what life "is."
Thank you so very much for your engaging essay-posts, dearest sister in Christ!
Quite so. True, I think, of Materialists generally.