Theoretical biology is concerned with providing science with explanatory frameworks within which to fit its findings. Biosemiotics is the study of sign-processes within life processes.

In the tradition of the field-changing four-volume essay collection Towards a Theoretical Biology issued by developmental biologist Conrad Hal Waddington from 1968 to 1972, this volume brings together many of today's leading scientists to discuss what they consider to be the most important and pressing problems in our current understandings of the biological world--and how best to advance our understandings of such life processes scientifically.