Biologists go to great effort to describe living systems and types of life from grand generalities to the tiniest gnat's hair. But it seems to me that only the physicists and mathematicians are interested in what life is.
To me it's like asking a person "what are you?" The descriptive answers - man, father, son, uncle, veteran, engineer, etc. - don't cut to the being, the "are" of the question.
Exactly, Alamo-Girl! I don't know why the insufficiency of this type of answer goes so unnoticed and unremarked. It addresses only surface or outward appearances, or incidental "accidents" pertaining to an entity (for lack of a better word).
When in the Gorgias, Socrates asks Chaerephon what question he would ask of the renowned Sophist, a puzzled Chaerephon asks Socrates, "What shall I ask him?" To which Socrates replies, "Ask him who he is."
That is not the same as asking what does a person do for a living, or what family connections he has, (or to put it crudely, who or what he can successfully breed with), etc. The question goes to the essential nature of the person, to the quality (or "whatness") of his being, if we can put it that way. Gorgias, with Polus' help, manages to duck it. And shortly thereafter Gorgias falls silent for the remainder of the dialogue.
We are to conclude that this type of question is repugnant to a Sophist.... It seems many neo-Darwinists try to avoid this question of "what is," too, on the grounds that it's not "a scientific question." The focus is, as I suggested, in the way things appear, not on what they actually are.
I think it's true that, as Niels Bohr points out, science is about making descriptions of nature, not about "explaining" the how or why of nature. Still scientific descriptions are of appearances that necessarily arise from the "essence" of what a thing really is. I don't see how anyone can pretend there is no "essence"....
You see the epistemological problem as well as I do, A-G. I can't express how glad I am for your good company here.
Thank you for your kind words of encouragement, dear Alamo-Girl, and for writing!