Abstract Despite major advances in biology and sustained debate in the philosophy of science, the question “What is life?” remains unresolved. Biology education, particularly through textbooks, continues to rely on non-consensual lists of characteristics that persist in students’ thinking, even when several have been revised or abandoned in contemporary science. To address this conceptual and pedagogical tension, we propose an ontological shift from understanding life as a set of properties to conceiving of it as a process. We show that both scientific fields—such as synthetic biology and origins of life research—and philosophy of biology increasingly converge on a process-oriented account. This framework accommodates challenging cases such as viruses, avoids essentialist interpretations, and supports more systemic and dynamic perspectives. Engaging students with the philosophical question “What is life?” may foster deeper conceptual change and contribute to a more integrated and reflective biology education.
Valencia et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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