The Path of Life: From Life at the Center to a Dynamic Ontology and a Science for Good Living

The question of life resists reduction: the more it is dissected into mechanisms, the farther we often move from its meaning. This essay argues that life should be understood as a path: an inwardly directed process — an unfolding of potential governed by formal, teleological principles — rather than as a set of inert biochemical facts. Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of psyche and entelechy, Hans Driesch’s embryological findings, and contemporary critiques of mechanistic science and capitalist life-organization, the essay proposes an epistemic and ethical reorientation: to know life we must listen to life’s language (feeling, direction, sense) and restore conditions that enable its flourishing. To operationalize this reorientation, the essay advances Euzoology — a life-centered science for a good living — which unites formal teleology, developmental dynamics, and an ethics of dwelling. Euzoology reframes questions of biology, social organization, and policy around the criteria of flourishing, coherence, and participation. The path of life is therefore both a philosophical discovery and a programmatic call: to recover forms of existence and knowledge that allow life to realize its intrinsic ends.