This course will take you through a heterodox theory of evolution. While Darwinism dominates our thinking about evolution today, it has never been, nor is today, the final 'scientific' word. The principal competitor for Darwinism on the public stage at the moment is Intelligent Design Theory. Both suffer from deep incoherencies.

In this course, you will learn a third, and different, way to think about evolution, one that forges a path between mindless Darwinism on the one hand, and Intelligent Design theory on the other.

It is derived from my perspective as a physiologist (concerned with how life works). Being a physiologist, I look at the phenomenon of life in a unique way. While physiology is a science of mechanism, it is also a profound statement of the nature of life per se. Physiologists are perhaps the scientific world’s last vitalists, that is to say, scientists who have an appreciation that the phenomenon of life is unlike any other in the universe.

An understanding of what makes life unique is essential for any theory of life (which includes evolution) to be coherent. Among life’s unique attributes is frank purposefulness and intentionality. Modern evolutionary theory denies these altogether, while Intelligent Design theory misattributes them. This course will show how evolution, like the rest of life, is a profoundly purposeful and intentional process.